INDIA CLAIMS to have proof of the direct involvement of Pakistan's powerful military Inter Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), in last week's strikes on Mumbai which claimed 172 lives spawning tension between the nuclear rivals.
Senior federal security officials in New Delhi, who wished to remain anonymous, said intelligence pooled with that from the US, indicated that the ISI had played an active role in training and launching the 10 gunmen who attacked the western port city last Wednesday. "The ISI is controlled by the army whose top leadership had information about the Mumbai operation," the official said, but admitted that Delhi had so far not officially conveyed its findings to Islamabad.
The New York Times, citing a former US defence department official concurred, claiming that former Pakistani army and ISI officers had helped train the Mumbai attackers. But the official source said no specific links had been uncovered for now between the terrorists and Pakistan's eight-month old civilian government.
Ajmal Amir Kasab (21), the lone gunman apprehended for the multiple strikes, told Indian interrogators that he had been sent by the proscribed Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, or Army of the Pure) militant group and identified two of the masterminds responsible, security officials said.
Kasab confessed that the al- Qaeda-associated LeT's senior functionary Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi had recruited him for the mission while the strike-team was "handled" on a satellite phone by Yusuf Muzammil the group's operational head during the attack.
He said Muzammil instructed the terrorists on tactics, firing discipline, and kept them abreast of Indian security operations launched against them by monitoring TV news channels. Pakistan's interior minister Rehman Malik said he had no information on either Lakhvi or Muzammil.
Indian officials said US security agencies including the FBI had also collated evidence of the LeT's role in the Mumbai attack.
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the US joint chiefs of staff, is believed to have told senior government and military officials in Islamabad on Wednesday that Washington had evidence on the involvement of Pakistan-based terrorists in the attack. The US, which has banned the LeT, is also believed to have asked Pakistan to crack down on the group based at Muridke near the eastern border city of Lahore and to arrest its head, Hafeez Mohammad Sayeed, who preaches that jihad is the duty of Muslims.
A car bomb killed at least 20 people and wounded scores in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar yesterday, officials said. The blast occurred near an assembly hall of minority Shia Muslims in a crowded part of the city. One building collapsed in flames and several others were badly damaged and on fire.