INDIA: The group most likely to have caused the carnage in Mumbai yesterday is the Sunni Islamic militant organisation Lashkar-e- Taiba, according to analysts.
Founded in the late 1980s to fight against Indian control of part of Kashmir, the group has split many times and no longer claims responsibility for terrorist attacks. But its record put it into the spotlight for this bloodshed.
"There is probably a link between the Mumbai bombs and the five explosions earlier in the day in Srinagar. Lashkar-e-Taiba is the only group with people in both cities, assuming there was some planning. It can't be a coincidence," said Prof Radha Kumar, of the Delhi Policy Group think tank.
Gareth Price of the Chatham House think tank also suspects the group. "It was almost certainly Lashkar-e-Taiba. They probably wanted to ensure Kashmir wasn't sidelined. They wanted to say 'we're still angry'," he said.
Lashkar-e-Taiba (Soldiers of the Pure) operated freely in Pakistan until shortly after September 11th, 2001. It recruited and raised funds openly, including from collection boxes in shops.
After US president George Bush pressed his Pakistani counterpart, Pervez Musharraf, to ban the group in January 2002, it split.
One faction renamed itself Jama'at ud Dawa while others worked more loosely, so the name Lashkar-e-Taiba is as vague an umbrella for militants focused on the Kashmir issue as al-Qaeda is for anti-American jihadis, according to Dr Price.
Until it was banned, Lashkar-e-Taiba took responsibility for attacks on Indian military targets, including one on a barracks at the Red Fort in Delhi in which three people died.
The group denied killing civilians, claiming it went against its religious beliefs.
Indian police accused it of causing explosions in Mumbai in August 2003 that killed 55 people and of a raid on the Indian parliament in 2001 that almost brought India and Pakistan to war.
The group was blamed for attacks in October in Delhi that killed more than 60 people and for explosions in the Hindu holy city of Varanasi this year, which killed at least 15 people.
The earthquake in northern Pakistan and parts of Kashmir in October gave the group a new lease of life.
Pakistan allowed it to collect funds openly again, officially for reconstruction work. Many of its offices reopened.