A Pakistan-based Islamic militant group fighting Indian rule in Kashmir Wednesday denied its claim of responsibility for the terrorist attacks in the United States, said AFP.
The hardline Lashkar-i-Taiba earlier said its suicide bombers had hijacked jets which plunged into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Tuesday morning, in attacks which US officials fear killed thousands.
But Lashkar spokesman Abdullah Muntazir later said he did not know who had claimed responsibility under the group's name in a statement sent to news agencies.
"We deny the report and have not issued any such statement," he said, adding that someone had issued a statement on the group's letterhead without permission.
"We will investigate who misused our letterhead," Muntazir said.
Lashkar is one of the most powerful and extreme Islamic groups fighting jihad or holy war against Indian rule in the Himalayan state of Kashmir, which is divided between India and Pakistan but claimed by both.
The separatist rebellion in the Muslim majority state has claimed more than 35,000 lives since it erupted in 1989.
In a phone call to Al Jazeera satellite channel’s office in Amman, a caller who was “speaking Arabic with an accent” claimed the responsibility of the Japanese Red Army for the series of terrorist attacks on US vital buildings.
The communist group said that the attacks came in retaliation for US atomic bombs that killed thousands of Japanese in the World War II in Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
