The Mumbai terrorist attack by Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba was out of al Qaeda play book, a top american counter-terrorism official has said, adding the terrorist outfit now has global ambition.

“We haven’t said that it (LeT) is directly targeting America. But it is certainly true that LET’s recent targets, particularly in Mumbai, was out of the al Qaeda play book,” Daniel Benjamin, Co-coordinator, Office of Counter-terrorism in the State Department said.

“Of course six Americans were killed there, and there were international targets, and there clearly was a desire to kill Westerners, Israelis, you know, the usual kinds of targets,” he said at a State Department news conference.

Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan and the other that espouse in some way or another an ideology that is either identical or a variant of the al Qaeda ideology have always had this choice of going after the near enemy or their far enemy.