Update on the jihad murders in India. “Militant-Linked Group Claims India Blasts,” from AP, with thanks to all who sent this in:
NEW DELHI — A little-known group that police say has ties to Kashmir’s most feared militants claimed responsibility Sunday for a series of terrorist bombings that killed 59 people in New Delhi….
A man called a local news agency in Indian Kashmir to say the militant Islamic Inquilab Mahaz, or Front for Islamic Uprising, staged the bombings, which police said killed 59 people and wounded 210.
The caller, who identified himself as Ahmed Yaar Ghaznavi, said the bombings were “meant as a rebuff to the claims of Indian security groups” that militants had been wiped out by security crackdowns and the Oct. 8 earthquake that devastated the insurgents’ heartland in the mountains of Kashmir.
A senior police officer in India’s Jammu-Kashmir state said the caller’s name was not familiar to intelligence agencies, and New Delhi’s deputy police chief, Karnail Singh, said the group had not been very active since 1996.
However, while Singh refused to comment on the claim of responsibility, he said the group is linked to the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, the most feared of the dozens of Kashmiri militant groups.
A leading anti-terrorism expert said earlier that the timing and nature of the blasts appeared to indicate the work of Lashkar.
“It looks like Lashkar. They are the most active group here,” said Vikram Sood, the former head of the Research and Analysis Wing, India’s foreign intelligence agency.