Pakistani security forces have arrested the alleged mastermind of last month's Mumbai attacks in a raid on a training camp used by the militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), government officials revealed yesterday.

A Pakistani official told The Times that among the eight militants arrested in the raid was Zakiur Rehman Lakhvi, LeT's operations chief, whom Indian officials have accused of organising the Mumbai attack.

The raid last night near Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir, was Islamabad's first attempt to respond to mounting pressure from India and the United States to take action against LeT after the Mumbai strike. Also arrested was Zarar Shah, another senior LeT leader and communications expert being investigated by India and the United States for his suspected role in Mumbai, according to the same government official.

The raid came only three days after Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, met Asif Ali Zardari, Pakistan's President, in Islamabad and won an assurance that he would take “strong action” against those behind the Mumbai atrocity.

However, the arrests are unlikely to satisfy either Delhi or Washington unless Islamabad follows up by prosecuting those held and taking further action against other militant groups linked to attacks on Indian soil.

“We've seen before how Pakistan will arrest some militants, keep them for a couple of months and then release them when the world's not paying attention,” said B. Raman, a former head of the Pakistan desk at the Research and Analysis Wing (India's MI6). “It must not be allowed to do that this time. They have to prosecute these people and dismantle the whole terrorist infrastructure,” he told The Times.

He named the three other Pakistani militant groups that should be targeted as Harkat-ul-Mujahidin, Harkat-ul-Jihad-al Islami and Jaish-e-Mohammed. Pakistani officials did not say what would happen to the eight arrested militants, but Mr Zardari turned down India's request for Pakistan to extradite twenty terror suspects last week, and has offered to try them in Pakistan instead.

Pakistani security officials refused to confirm or deny the raid publicly or the arrests of the activists from LeT, which is thought to have close links to the nation's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

Government officials, speaking off the record, said that Pakistani troops raided a large compound belonging to Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), the parent organisation of LeT, about three miles outside Muzaffarabad. Residents said that they saw army helicopters taking part in the raid and heard gunfire and explosions.

The compound has been known for years as a training camp for LeT, which was founded in 1989 with the help of the ISI to fight Indian rule in the disputed region of Kashmir.

LeT was banned in Pakistan in 2002 after its militants attacked the Indian Parliament, prompting India and Pakistan to mass troops on their common border and almost sparking a fourth war between the nuclear-armed neighbours.

However, security analysts and officials say the group has continued to operate freely, and has even grown in popularity and strength, under the banner of JuD, which is led by LeT's founder, Hafiz Mohammed Saeed.

Mr Saeed, who has denied any part in the Mumbai attacks, condemned the raid on his organisation's compound. “The Government has shown signs of weakness by targeting Kashmiri organisations,” he said. “India wants to crush the independence movement of Kashmir using the Mumbai attacks as a pretext.”

Lakhvi, the alleged mastermind of the Mumbai attack, was also a founder of LeT and has worked under several aliases as the group's supreme operational commander. US officials say that he has directed the group's operations in Kashmir, Chechnya, Bosnia and South-East Asia.

Also known as Abdullah Azam, he comes from Okara district in Pakistan's central province of Punjab, which is where Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only militant captured in the Mumbai attacks, was born and raised. Indian investigators say that Kasab has identified Lakhvi as one of his LeT contacts and admitted undergoing training at militant camps in Pakistan, including one near Muzaffarabad.

Yesterday Pakistani government and military leaders met in Islamabad to discuss the security situation. “Pakistan rejects terrorism in all forms and manifestations, and recognises that action against terrorism is integral to its core interests,” the Government said in a statement after the meeting.

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