The United States on Thursday designated as terrorists a shadowy group that claimed an April attack in Kashmir, which triggered Indian strikes on Pakistani territory. Secretary of State Marco Rubio described The Resistance Front as a “front and proxy” of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a UN-designated terrorist group based in Pakistan. The terrorist designation “demonstrates the Trump administration’s commitment to protecting our national security interests, countering terrorism, and enforcing President (Donald) Trump’s call for justice for the Pahalgam attack,” Rubio said in a statement. Gunmen in April shot dead 26 people, almost all Hindus, in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in the Indian-administered side of divided Kashmir. Survivors told reporters that gunmen separated women and children and ordered some of the men to recite the Muslim declaration of faith. Little had been previously known about The Resistance Front, which claimed responsibility for the attack. India designates TRF as a terrorist organization and the India-based Observer Research Foundation calls it “a smokescreen and an offshoot of LeT.” Pakistan has denied responsibility for the attack.
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