The LeT denied any responsibility for the terrorist strikes.

But American intelligence agencies were quoted as saying that the group has received some training and logistic support in the past from Pakistan's powerful spy service ISI, and that Pakistan's government has long turned a blind eye to the LeT camps on the Kashmir border.

American and Indian officials, the paper said, were pursuing the possibility that the attackers arrived off the coast of Mumbai in a large ship and then boarded smaller boats before initiating their attack.

They have for years blamed LeT for a campaign of violence against high-profile targets throughout India, including the December 2001 attack on Indian Parliament and an August 2007 strike at an amusement park in Hyderabad, the paper said,

Noting that at times, Indian officials have also said Jaish-e-Muhammad was responsible for the attack on Parliament.

That attack prompted the Bush administration to try to freeze LeT's assets and press Gen Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's President at the time, to crack down on the group's training operations in Pakistan, the paper recalled.

A State Department report released in 2008 called LeT ‘one of the largest and most proficient of the Kashmir-focused militant groups’.

The report said that the LeT drew financing in part from Pakistani expatriates in the Middle East, and that it used a front organisation called Jamaat ud-Daawa to coordinate charitable activities.

It said the actual size of the group was unknown, but estimated it at ‘several thousand’ members, the paper noted.

... contd.