WASHINGTON, March 12 (UPI) -- The threat from the Pakistani militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba is being overlooked by U.S. counter-terrorism officials, a U.S. lawmaker said.
Lashkar-e-Toiba surfaced on the international radar when it claimed responsibility for a coordinated assault on high-profile targets in the Indian coastal city of Mumbai in 2008.
U.S. intelligence officials told the U.S. Senate in February that LeT was setting its sights on Western targets as its militancy and capabilities expand.
U.S. Rep. Gary Ackerman, D-N.Y., the chairman of the U.S. House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, warned the threat from LeT was grave.
"We need to take this threat very, very seriously," he said. "The LeT is a deadly serious group of fanatics."
U.S. authorities in February, meanwhile, charged U.S. native David Coleman Headley with conducting "extensive surveillance" for LeT in the Mumbai attacks.
Ackerman said the expanding ties developed by LeT make the militant group especially troublesome.
"They are well-financed, ambitious and, most disturbingly, both tolerated by and connected to the Pakistani military," he warned.
Islamabad blamed LeT for attacks on the Indian Parliament in 2001. Ackerman, however, said LeT posed a growing threat to Western interests across the globe.
"The LeT has put the world on notice that they intend to escalate the carnage and spread it world-wide," he said. "This group of savages needs to be crushed."
