US designates Kashmir attack group TRF as terrorist outfit

THE UNITED STATES on Thursday designated The Resistance Front (TRF), the group blamed for the April attack in Kashmir, as a terrorist organisation. The attack had triggered the worst conflict between India and Pakistan in decades.

US secretary of state Marco Rubio said TRF is a "front and proxy" of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a UN-designated terrorist group based in Pakistan.

The 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.

In April, gunmen shot dead 26 people, most of them Hindus, in Pahalgam, a tourist area in the Indian-administered region of Kashmir.

Survivors told reporters that the gunmen had separated women and children and ordered some of the men to recite the Muslim declaration of faith.

India's foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Friday that the US decision was a "strong affirmation of India-US counter-terrorism cooperation", writing on X (formerly Twitter).

Little was previously known about TRF, which initially claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam killings.

As criticism grew over the attack, the group later retracted its claim.

India has listed TRF as a terrorist group, and the India-based Observer Research Foundation think tank has described it as "a smokescreen and an offshoot of LeT".

New Delhi has accused Pakistan of being involved in the attack, a claim denied by Islamabad.

The violence in Pahalgam led to four days of fighting between India and Pakistan, leaving more than 70 people dead on both sides. It was the worst military standoff between the two countries since 1999.