In Kabul, LeT hunted for Indians by name
Washington, March 3: Four Lashkar-e-Tayyaba gunmen, who stormed into the Kabul guesthouses packed with Indian officials, came clad in burqas to hide their strapped explosives and appeared to have detailed knowledge, including names,
of their intended Indian victims.
While one attacker stayed to detonate a van packed with explosives on the main road, the other three, including one who spoke in Urdu, spread out and entered the two hotels shouting the names of Indian officials. Quoting Afghan intelligence officials, the Washington Post said on Wednesday that the Pakistani militant group LeT orchestrated the deadly attack that targeted the two hotels on February 26.
The paper said the assessment could signal a departure for the group, which has long focused on attacking Indians within India. The group is blamed for the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks.
“We are very close to exact proof and evidence that the attack on the Indian guesthouse ,,, is not the work of the Afghan Taliban but was carried out by the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba network, which is dependent on the Pakistan military,” Afghan intelligence spokesman Sayed Ansari was quoted as saying by the Post.
Mr Ansari said Afghan officials had determined that one of the bombers involved in the Friday attack yelled — “Where is the Indian director?” — as he stormed into one of the hotels. The Post said others had also sought out the Indians.
“This kind of information, where the Indians are, is not the ability of the Afghan Taliban to know,” Mr Ansari said.
The victims in the Kabul massacre included six Indians, one Italian, a French filmmaker, three Afghan policemen and four civilians, as well as one body which was too dismembered to be identified.
The Post said American intelligence officials in Kabul believed that the attack was carried out by the Haqqani network, a Pakistan-based Afghan militant group. The newspaper also reported that Indian officials suspect that the two groups worked together to stage the raid.
The Post said the LeT’s involvement would have significant implications as it would undermine the fragile peace efforts between India and Pakistan. India and Afghanistan had previously implicated Pakistan and its Haqqani network for the bloody 2008 bombings of the Indian embassy in Kabul that had claimed 58 lives.
The emerging collaboration between the LeT and Afghan terror groups was corroborated by a retired Pakistani brigadier, Mohammed Saad, who told the Post: “They (LeT) are aligning with the Taliban.” He said LeT members were training with the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and that language problems had forced these recruits to operate alongside Afghan militants inside Afghanistan.
The Post also said there were indications emerging of a clear nexus between Pakistani militant groups and their
Afghan counterparts and cited the recent killing of Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi chief Qari Zafar in a drone attack on February 24. Zafar’s group had originated in Pakistan’s heartland, but he was killed in North Waziristan, base of both the Haqqani network and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
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