| Militant-linked charity Jamaat-ud-Dawa on front line of Pakistan earthquake aid, United Nations says |
The United Nations says a Pakistani charity helping earthquake victims is a front for a deadly militant group blamed for a bloody 2008 attack on the Indian city of Mumbai.
The group, Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), has about 2,000 volunteers in northern Pakistan after Monday's quake killed 272 people in the country and damaged about 25,000 houses.
The UN and US said they had sanctioned JuD and its sister organisation, the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, because they exploit disasters to raise volunteers and funds for militants.
They said JuD was a front for Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) group, which carries out attacks in Indian-administered Kashmir
The disputed Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan and claimed by both.
Lashkar-e-Taiba was also blamed for the 2008 Mumbai attack in which 166 people were killed.
But 50-year-old herbal healer Najib Alam, whose mud-and-stone house was damaged by the magnitude-7.5 quake, said JuD were the only charity in his mountain village of Rehankot in the Upper Dir region.
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