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By Mazhar Abbas KARACHI (AFP) - Pakistan-based Muslim group Lashkar-e-Toiba warned Monday that it had inducted special squads to attack troops if India did not halt a controversial census in Jammu and Kashmir. "We have set up around 100 groups of fedayeen [ready to sacrifice] for the sole purpose of attacking Indian troops and army camps," said Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, chief of the outfit. He said each group consists of three or four Lashkar Islamists who would start their operations if the census continued. Lashkar and another powerful militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen, have warned census officials of dire consequences if they took part in the head count. The census operation launched last week was due to end on September 30th, but the deadline has been extended by five days, after government officials refused to join the operation. Feroz Ahmed, chief census officer in Indian-controlled Kashmir, has appealed to the Islamists to withdraw their death threats and allow the first local census in two decades. "State employees are heeding those threats and staying away from work. There is no denying the fact that the death threats have seriously hampered our census operations," said Ahmed said Saturday. "How can we allow them when thousands of Kashmiri Muslim families have either migrated to Pakistan or to other states of India?" Saeed asked. The Indian government was also bringing hundreds of Hindu families to settle in the Muslim-dominated Himalayan territory, he added. The state government had to cancel a census in 1991 amid similar threats by Islamic groups. Lashkar-e-Toiba claimed responsibility for recent killings of four Indian soldiers in a "suicide" attack on an army camp in Kashmir. Three Islamists including two "suicide" bombers also died in the attack. It said the attack was "to avenge killings of innocent civilians" in Pakistani Kashmir by Indian troops' firing on bordering villages in the Islamabad-administered northern third of the divided Kashmir state. "We have not named the group of fedayeen a suicide squad because suicide is un-Islamic," Saeed said. "We always tell the squad members to try and save their lives but they should not return without success," he said. "I have asked my fedayeen not to attack the civilians," he said, but added the targets would remain secret. Hundreds of youths were ready to join the fedayeen squads, which has become one of their "most successful" tactics since a Muslim revolt erupted in Kashmir in 1989, he said. "Every second person who joins us wants to become a member of fedayeen. But we don't include new recruits in such operations," he said. "We had formed the fedayeen group after the 1999 border conflict in the Kargil region of Kashmir for the exclusive purpose of occupying key heights. After the successful operation there we decided to expand the group," Saeed said. More than a dozen "suicide" attacks have been reported in the troubled Indian state since last year, claiming several soldiers, border guards and officials. The Lashkar is one of the many Islamic groups involved in an armed separatist struggle in the Indian zone in Kashmir that has claimed more than 34,000 lives since 1989. India accuses Pakistan of fermenting the insurgency. Islamabad says it only gives moral and political support to what it calls an "indigenous" Kashmiri struggle for self-determination. The 53-year dispute over the status of Kashmir has caused two of the three wars between Pakistan and India since their independence in 1947. |
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