Pakistani troops grab mastermind of terror attacks on Mumbai

PAKISTANI troops have raided a camp used by the extremist group blamed in the Mumbai attacks, it emerged today.

Armed forces arrested at least 12 people at the alleged base of banned terror group Laskhar-e-Taiba.

One of the men arrested is suspected of planning the Mumbai attacks, according to an official at the Islamic charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa, which runs the camp. Witnesses heard several loud explosions and saw a helicopter and dozens of soldiers close to the town of Muzaffarabad, in the Pakistani part of the disputed Kashmir region . Troops briefly exchanged fire with people inside the camp before making the arrests.

A senior intelligence official confirmed the arrests and said several injured people are being treated, and questioned, at a military hospital. Militants told the Associated Press that the camp was used until 2004 by LeT to train recruits to fight Indian rule in its section of the Kashmir. More recently, it was used by Lashkar's parent organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa for education and charity work, they said.

A resident, Nisar Ali, said: "The entire area was sealed off but I heard two loud blasts in the evening after a military helicopter landed there."

The raid is Pakistan's first known response to the co-ordinated attacks on Mumbai, which left at least 170 people dead and 300 injured. India says the four-day siege, which began on November 26, was carried out and plotted by Pakistani militants belonging to LeT.

Mumbai and the US have repeatedly called for Pakistan to crack down on the group. Islamabad denies any involvement in the Mumbai attacks but some of the gunmen are said to have had links to Pakistani militants.

Indian investigators have said that the only gunman captured in Mumbai, Azam Amir Qasab, had been indoctrinated by LeT and trained at one of their camps.

Although the authorities in Pakistan formally banned the group six years ago and curbed its activities analysts say its camps were never closed.

LeT, a jihadist militia, was created with the help of Pakistan's intelligence agencies in the Eighties to be a guerrilla army against Hindus in Indian Kashmir.