India yesterday welcomed the United States’ blacklisting of Kashmiri separatist group Hizbul Mujahideen as a terrorist organization, reports AFP.

The US Treasury Department, in a statement on its website Wednesday, said it listed the Pakistan-based outfit as a “foreign terrorist organisation”, freezing its assets “to deny Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) the resources it needs to carry out terrorist attacks”.

“We welcome the designation of the Hizbul Mujahideen as a terrorist organisation,” Raveesh Kumar, India’s foreign ministry spokesman, told reporters.

“All of us are aware of what kind of terrorist activities they have conducted in the state of Jammu and Kashmir,” he said, adding it was key to “end moral, diplomatic and material support” to such groups.

Kashmir has been divided between India and Pakistan since the end of British colonial rule in 1947 and

both claim the territory in its entirety.

Homegrown rebel groups, including the HM, have been fighting around half a million Indian troops deployed in the region, calling for independence or a merger with Pakistan since an armed rebellion broke-out in 1989.