WASHINGTON: The United States on Thursday designated as terrorists a shadowy group blamed for an April attack in Kashmir, which triggered the worst conflict between India and Pakistan in decades.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio described The Resistance Front (TRF) as a “front and proxy” of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), a UN-designated terrorist group based in Pakistan.

The terrorist 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.

Gunmen in April shot dead 26 people, almost all Hindus, in Pahalgam, a tourist hub in the Indian-administered side of divided Kashmir.

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

India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar on Friday said that Washington’s action was a “strong affirmation of India-US counter-terrorism cooperation”, writing on X.

Little had been previously known about TRF, which initially claimed responsibility for the Pahalgam attack.

But as public criticism mounted over the killings, the group retracted its claim.

India designates TRF as a terrorist organisation and the India-based Observer Research Foundation think tank calls it “a smokescreen and an offshoot of LeT”.

New Delhi has accused Pakistan of backing the attack, a charge denied by Islamabad.

The Pahalgam violence sparked four days of fighting between the two neighbours that killed more than 70 people on both sides, in the worst standoff between the foes since 1999.