rediff.com: Lashkar-e-Tayiba: The massacre specialists

The pro-Pakistani outfit, Lashkar-e-Tayiba, comprising mostly foreign mercenaries from Afghanistan and Pakistan, has emerged as a major perpetrator of massacres in Jammu and Kashmir, according to official sources.

This mercenary outfit has engineered 12 massacres, killing 248 Hindus in Jammu and Kashmir during last four years, sources told PTI in Srinagar on Friday.

The ruthless killings have spread terror, particularly among minority community members in Doda, Rajouri, Poonch and Udhampur districts of Jammu division, the sources added.

Lashkar, which mostly operates in vast, rugged and dense forest areas of Doda, has used brutal methods to kill people, the sources said.

Of the massacres engineered by them, seven were in Doda, three in Kashmir, two in Anantnag and one in Srinagar and one each in Udhampur and Rajouri districts of Jammu division, the sources said.

In seven massacres in Doda, Lashkar killed 128 Hindus, including eight members of Village Defence Committee, followed by 85 Hindus in Kashmir, 27 Hindus in Udhampur and eight in Rajouri, the sources said, adding over 150 were injured in these massacres.

The Lashkar's first massacre was on January 5, 1996, when they killed 16 Hindus in Barshalla village of Doda, followed by 17 Hindus in Sumber area of the same district and 25 Kashmiri pandits in Wundhama of Srinagar on January 25-26, 1997, they said.

It was followed by killing of eight Hindus in Swari (Rajouri) on June 24, 1997 and 25 in Chapnari (Doda) on June 19, 1998. Thirty-five labourers were killed in Kalaban bordering Doda and Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh on August 8, 1998, 27 at Prankote (Doda) on April 18, 1998 and 15 at Layata in Doda on July 19, 1999, the sources said.

Lashkar has a strength of over 350 activists in Doda district and 90 per cent of them are foreign mercenaries, the sources said, adding that they have suicide squads which are known as 'fidayeens'.

Their composition is stated to be 60 per cent of Afghanis, 30 per cent of Pakistanis and the rest from other countries, the sources said.


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