Terror Outfits Targeting India in US List of 20 Groups Operating in Pakistan

Islamabad: The US has shared with Pakistan a list 20 terrorist groups like the LeT, JeM and HUM that Washington believes are operating from its soil to target India and Afghanistan, a media report said Thursday.

Top on the list is the Haqqani network which, the US says has safe havens in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas in northwestern Pakistan and uses them to launch attacks into Afghanistan, Dawn reported.

The list includes three types of militants groups: those who launch attacks into Afghanistan, those who attack targets inside Pakistan and those who are focused on Kashmir, the newspaper quoted diplomatic sources as saying.

India-specific terror groups like Harakatul Mujahideen, Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) are on the list.

Harakatul Mujahideen is a Pakistan-based militant group operating primarily in Kashmir. The US says that group had links to Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda as well, the report said.

JeM also operates mainly in Kashmir. The United States identified LeT as one of the largest and most active terrorist organisations in South Asia. It was involved in the 2001 Indian parliament attack and the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Other groups on the list are: Harakatul Jihadi-i-Islami Jamaatul Ahrar, Jamaatud Dawa al-Quran and Tariq Gidar Group, which is one of 13 TTP affiliates.

The Tariq Gidar Group has been behind some of the deadliest attacks inside Pakistan, including the Dec 16, 2014, massacre at the Army Public School in Peshawar that left 132 schoolchildren and nine staffers dead.

The sources, however, rejected as incorrect the suggestion that US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson gave a list of 75 terrorists to Pakistani officials when he visited Islamabad last week.

Tillerson told the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Monday that Pakistan was willing to target terrorists if provided specific information about their whereabouts and Washington plans to give Islamabad the opportunity to do so.

He said the information that the US delegation gave Pakistan went "beyond just names of individuals" and also expected "to receive information" from Pakistan that would be useful in targeting militants.

Tillerson said that it was in the interest of Pakistan to change its "long-standing" relationship with terrorist organisations.