Violent 'army of the pure'

Army camps are a favourite target of Lashkar-e-Toiba

By BBC News Online's Santosh Sinha

The Kashmiri militant group that India has linked to the attack on parliament in Delhi, and whose assets have been frozen by the United States, has an estimated strength of 300 activists.

India says Lashkar-e-Toiba, meaning the Army of the Pure, is based in Pakistan's Punjab province.

The group operates primarily in the Indian-administered Kashmiri areas of Srinagar Valley and the districts of Poonch, Rajauri and Doda.

Suspected attacks

July 1999
Paramilitary camp at Bandipore, 4 dead

Dec 1999
SOG headquarters, 12 police dead

March 2000
Massacre of 35 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura

It is also believed to be running training camps for Kashmiri militants in Kotli, Sialkot and Samani regions of Pakistan.

Lashkar's professed ideology goes beyond merely challenging Indian rule in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir.

In a pamphlet entitled Why Are We Waging Jihad, the group defines its agenda as the restoration of Islamic rule over all parts of India.

Attacking army

In recent times, Lashkar has emerged as the most daring Kashmiri militant group because of its suicide attacks against Indian army and paramilitary installations.

The first of these attacks was carried out in July 1999, when Lashkar-e-Toiba militants killed four people at a residential complex of a paramilitary force in Bandipore, near Srinagar.

Thirty-five Sikhs were killed in Chattisinghpora massacre

Since then, it his thought to have carried out more than a dozen such operations in Kashmir - the most spectacular being against Special Operations Group headquarters on 27 December 1999.

Twelve policemen and three Lashkar activists were killed in that attack.

Lashkar-e-Toiba has also been blamed for the killing 23 people in Wandhama in January 1988, killing 25 people in Doda the same year and killing 35 Sikhs in Chattisinghpura in March, 2000.

And last December the group carried out an attack on an army camp in Delhi's historic Red Fort killing three people.