Afghan intelligence officials believe Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba was behind last week’s attack in Kabul that killed 17 people, including six Indians, and that the gunmen sought out Indian victims. A senior US official, meanwhile, said he did not believe the attackers were targeting Indians and warned against jumping to conclusions.

If the information provided by the Afghan intelligence is true, the incident would mark a significant expansion of the activities of LeT, which has until now been focused on targeting sites within India, including the Mumbai attacks in November of 2008.

According to a Washington Post report, Afghan intelligence spokesman Sayed Ansari said investigators had concluded that LeT was involved in the Kabul attack based on evidence that it was carried out by a team of suicide bombers who spoke Urdu and were searching for Indian victims. The claim has not been verified by US intelligence officials or an Indian team, which is investigating the incident. However, Indian investigators suspect the involvement of the Taliban, particularly the Haqqani network, in association with the LeT.

A senior Obama administration official, meanwhile, said he did not believe that the attackers were targeting Indians. Richard Holbrooke, the special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan, told reporters on Tuesday, "I don’t accept the fact that this was an attack on an Indian facility,” unlike attacks in 2008 and 2009 on the Indian Embassy in Kabul. “They were foreigners, non-Indian foreigners got hurt. It was a soft target,” Holbrooke said, adding, “and let’s not jump to conclusions. Let’s not draw a conclusion for which there’s no proof.”

Holbrooke noted that both India and Pakistan have legitimate security interests in the region. “It’s not an accident that Afghanistan was the centre of the so-called Great Game in the 19th century,” he said.

He said it was not helpful when either side says the other has no legitimate interest in Afghanistan. “It’s hard to have a dialogue,” Holbrooke said, adding that while Afghanistan is not the core issue between India and Pakistan, it is a part of the issue.

He said on his recent trips to the region, both his Indian and Pakistani interlocutors have expressed their concerns about water issues. “It is our view that it is in our national interest to improve relations with both countries, not at the expense of the other,” he said.