Possible outside links to attackers eyed

The scale and sophistication of the Mumbai terror attacks suggest the perpetrators received training outside the country, counterterrorism experts say.

Although cautioning it was still too soon to make any definitive assessments, experts told The Washington Post Muslim terror groups with links to Pakistan, long active in the disputed Kashmir region, are likely suspects in the Mumbai attacks, in which teams of heavily armed gunmen killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more.

No indigenous Indian group has this level of capability, Bruce Riedel, a former South Asia analyst for the CIA and National Security Council, told the Post. The goal is to damage the symbol of India's economic renaissance, undermine investor confidence and provoke an India-Pakistani crisis.

An unnamed U.S. counterterrorism official told the newspaper Lashkar-i-Taiba and Jaish-i-Muhammad, two terror groups based in Kashmir with alleged links to the Pakistan's intelligence services, may be behind the attacks.

That's the thing people are starting to look at. But I can't caution enough to treat it as a theory, a working assumption. It's still too early for hard and fast conclusions, he said, adding, What the Indians have in their favor is that they've got some of these guys.

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