Official: Pakistani group behind attacks in Kabul

March 3, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

KABUL

An Afghan intelligence official put the blame Tuesday on the Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba for staging the deadly car bomb and suicide attacks that targeted foreigners last week in Kabul.

The assertion that the attacks in the Afghan capital were the handiwork of Lashkar-e-Taiba — the same militants that India blames for the 2008 Mumbai terrorist assaults that killed 166 — could jeopardize recently restarted peace talks between Pakistan and India.

The Afghan Taliban insurgents already claimed responsibility for the attacks, which killed 16 people, including six Indians, after a car bomb exploded and gunmen wearing suicide vests hidden under burqas stormed residential hotels popular with foreigners. At least 56 people were wounded.

Saeed Ansari, a spokesman for Afghanistan’s intelligence service, told The Associated Press on Tuesday that his agency has evidence that Pakistanis, specifically Lashkar-e-Taiba, were involved in the attacks. He also said one of the attackers was heard speaking Urdu, a Pakistani language.

Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of several militant Islamist groups that Pakistan’s military intelligence helped create in the 1980s, seeking to use them against archrival India and fight Indian rule in Kashmir.

Ansari said last week’s Kabul attacks bore similarities to two suicide bombings at the Indian Embassy in Kabul in 2008 and 2009 and the car bomb attack in January at a residential hotel in one of the safest neighborhoods in the capital.

Police said initially that two suicide attackers were involved in Friday’s attack. Ansari told three private television stations that there were four gunmen with Kalishnokov rifles and suicide vests — and that they wore burqas, the all- encompassing veil for women, to hide their gear. He said one attacker stayed to detonate a van packed with explosives, while the other three spread out and entered two hotels, where they fired on guests and then set off their explosives.