Pak's JuD clampdown result of incessant India, international pressure

London, Jan 16 (ANI): The Pakistan Government announced that it had widened its crackdown on banned terror organization Lashkar-e-Toiba's frontal outfit, Jammat-ud-Daawa, under consistent pressure from India and West to act more decisively against the groups operating from its soil.

Bowing to weeks of international pressure, Interior Secretary Kamal Shah said that the number of people arrested had risen to 71 as a further 124 people had been placed under surveillance, The Independent reported.

The suspects in question are members of JuD, a charity affiliated to LeT, the Pakistan-based militant group blamed for the Mumbai terror attacks.

Earlier, Rehman Malik, the Interior Ministry chief, told reporters in Islamabad that authorities had moved to shut down 20 offices, 87 schools, two libraries, seven religious schools and six websites linked to JuD, a group now proscribed as a terrorist organisation by the United Nations Security Council.

Malik added that the crackdown included over a dozen JuD-operated relief camps, erected in the wake of 2005 Kashmir earthquake but alleged to be used for training militants.

Earlier, speaking at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband called on Pakistan yesterday to show "zero tolerance" toward militants based in the country.

The best solution to terrorist threat in the long term, Miliband said, was cooperation, adding that he would call on Pakistan to take urgent action to dismantle the militant networks that exist on its soil. It must display "zero tolerance," he warned.

Miliband will arrive in Islamabad today for talks with Pakistani leadership as part of an ongoing bid to ease simmering tensions between the two neighbours.

Although the threat of war has receded, Delhi and Islamabad remain locked in a near-daily exchange of diplomatic crossfire, the paper said. (ANI)