NEW DELHI (AP)- India’s defense min­is­ter on Mon­day repeat­ed a warn­ing that Islam­ic mil­i­tants based in Pak­istan were tar­get­ing Indi­an nuclear, mil­i­tary and reli­gious sites, a news agency report­ed.

Defense Min­is­ter Pranab Mukher­jee told law­mak­ers that mil­i­tants from Lashkar-e-Tayab­ba — a group believed to have links to al-Qai­da — “are plan­ning to car­ry out some strikes on crit­i­cal infra­struc­ture items, mil­i­tary tar­gets and reli­gious places,” accord­ing to the Press Trust of India.

There’s also intel­li­gence reports indi­cat­ing Lashkar is plan­ning to attack nuclear instal­la­tions in India, Mukher­jee said.

His com­ments came three days after Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advis­er M.K. Narayanan issued a sim­i­lar warn­ing, which was dis­missed by Islam­abad as an Indi­an attempt to defame Pak­istan.

Lashkar is among the groups sus­pect­ed of tak­ing part in a string of bomb­ings in India, includ­ing the July 11 Bom­bay train bomb­ings, which killed 207 peo­ple.

Mukher­jee told Par­lia­ment the gov­ern­ment was tak­ing the lat­est threats seri­ous­ly.

“Nec­es­sary steps are being tak­en to pro­tect our vital instal­la­tions and oth­er high-pro­file tar­gets,” he said, with­out elab­o­rat­ing.

Banned in Pak­istan and but report­ed­ly still oper­at­ing there open­ly, Lashkar is among the more than a dozen Islam­ic rebel groups fight­ing Indi­an rule in Kash­mir. The rebels want the ter­ri­to­ry to be inde­pen­dent or merged with Pak­istan, and New Del­hi has long accused Islam­abad of pro­vid­ing mate­r­i­al aid and train­ing to the insur­gents. Pak­istan says it only gives them diplo­mat­ic and moral sup­port.

About 68,000 peo­ple have been killed in the con­flict since it began in 1989.