MULTAN: Punjab Police Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) on Wednesday reportedly raided a militant hideout and killed six suspected members of the banned Jamaatul-Ahrar (JA).
Police officials said they had launched the raids after the JA, a splinter group originally belonging to the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), had initiated their new campaign of violence in the country.
The CTD said its officers had surrounded a JA hideout in Multan and ordered the suspects inside to surrender.
“But the terrorists started firing at the raiding party and threw explosives,” a spokesman for the department, who the unit does not identify for security reasons, said in a statement.
Six militants were killed while three or four fled under cover of darkness, the department added. The force also seized weapons belonging to the militants, which included two hand grenades, two automatic rifles and two pistols.
The force had reportedly mobilised after being notified that the militants were planning to launch attacks on “vital installations” and the government in the area.
The group had earlier claimed responsibility for the suicide attack at Charing Cross in Lahore on Monday that had taken the lives of 14 people and wounded more than 80 others.
In addition, militants had also caused the death of two bomb-disposal officers in Quetta, who had been defusing the explosive device at the time. Furthermore, a suicide bomber had on Wednesday blown himself up outside a government office in the Mohmand Agency, killing five people.
Another attack in Peshawar, in which a suicide bomber on a motorbike had attacked a group of judges in a van, had resulted in the death of the van driver.
The increased attacks underlined the threat militants pose to the government, despite an army offensive launched in 2014 to push them out of their strongholds near the Afghan border.
Foreign office officials informed that the deputy head of mission at Afghanistan’s embassy in Islamabad, Syed Abdul Nasir Yousafi, had been summoned on Wednesday in order for the administration to voice their concern about the number of JA “sanctuaries” in Afghanistan.
“Afghanistan was urged to take urgent measures to eliminate the terrorists and their sanctuaries, financiers and handlers,” the foreign office said in a statement.
Pakistan alleges that the militants launch attacks from the Afghan side of the border.
.jpg)
.jpg)