A little-known militant group in Kashmir has threatened to shoot Muslim women without veil from Friday, local media reported on Thursday. "We will start targetting Muslim women without purdah with bullets from September 14," the spokesman of Lashkar-e-Jabbar was quoted by local Urdu daily Alsafa .

"Muslim women and girls should strictly adhere to purdah," he said. Lashkar-e-Jabbar owned an acid attack on two Muslim women in Srinagar on August 8 and warned with more such attacks if Muslim women did not switch on to an Islamic dress code.

The group's extended deadline ended on September 10 and the following day suspected cadres of the group sprayed coloured water at a Muslim school-teacher without veil in Srinagar.

The group has urged the heads of all the female institutions in Kashmir to make women and girls wear veil or cloak. "Otherwise you people will be responsible for the consequences," group's spokesman was quoted by Alsafa on Thursday.

Jabbar has also directed Hindu women to wear a "bindi" or a coloured mark over their foreheads and Sikh women to cover their heads with a saffron cloth. The militant group's fiat has sparked fears of a Taliban-style campaign across Kashmir to enforce Islamic ways of life in this Himalayan state, where militancy since 1989 has claimed nearly 35,000 lives.

Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir's dominant militant group and others have distanced themselves from the Lashkar-e-Jabbar and its threats. Militants, however, have banned beauty parlours, liquor stores and cinema theatres in Kashmir since the start of the insurgency

A little-known militant group in Kashmir has threatened to shoot Muslim women without veil from Friday, local media reported on Thursday. "We will start targetting Muslim women without purdah with bullets from September 14," the spokesman of Lashkar-e-Jabbar was quoted by local Urdu daily Alsafa .

"Muslim women and girls should strictly adhere to purdah," he said. Lashkar-e-Jabbar owned an acid attack on two Muslim women in Srinagar on August 8 and warned with more such attacks if Muslim women did not switch on to an Islamic dress code.

The group's extended deadline ended on September 10 and the following day suspected cadres of the group sprayed coloured water at a Muslim school-teacher without veil in Srinagar.

The group has urged the heads of all the female institutions in Kashmir to make women and girls wear veil or cloak. "Otherwise you people will be responsible for the consequences," group's spokesman was quoted by Alsafa on Thursday.

Jabbar has also directed Hindu women to wear a "bindi" or a coloured mark over their foreheads and Sikh women to cover their heads with a saffron cloth. The militant group's fiat has sparked fears of a Taliban-style campaign across Kashmir to enforce Islamic ways of life in this Himalayan state, where militancy since 1989 has claimed nearly 35,000 lives.

Hizbul Mujahideen, Kashmir's dominant militant group and others have distanced themselves from the Lashkar-e-Jabbar and its threats. Militants, however, have banned beauty parlours, liquor stores and cinema theatres in Kashmir since the start of the insurgency