Home Latest News Four Al Qaeda Militants Killed in Karachi

Four Al Qaeda Militants Killed in Karachi

by AFP
File Photo. Rizwan Tabassum

File Photo. Rizwan Tabassum

Police claim terrorists’ leader Sajjad was the Karachi commander of Al Qaeda in South Asia.

Karachi Police on Friday said they had shot dead four regional Al Qaeda militants including a senior leader in an early morning encounter.

The leader, named “Sajjad” alias Kargil, was said to be a Bangladeshi who moved to Pakistan in 2009 and specialized in making IEDs and suicide jackets. “The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the police raided a house in Qayyumabad neighborhood in the eastern part of Karachi where the suspects were plotting a terrorist attack,” said a local police official on condition of anonymity. He added Sajjad was the Karachi commander of Al Qaeda in South Asia, a new branch of the global militant outfit that was officially launched last September, along with three others.

Umar Khatab, a senior police official of the CID, confirmed the incident. “Sajjad came from Bangladesh to Pakistan in 2009 and lived in Waziristan where he swore allegiance to Asim Umar, the Pakistan chief of AQIS,” Khatab told AFP.

He said the police recovered ammunition, weapons and a suicide jacket from the house after the shootout. It was not immediately possible to confirm the details of the event with independent witnesses from the neighborhood.

Rights activists say suspected militants who are captured are often killed in staged encounters by security forces.

Pakistan has upped the ante against the Taliban and Al Qaeda linked militants after a Dec. 16 attack on a military-run school in Peshawar. The country’s deadliest terror attack killed 150 people, 134 of whom were schoolchildren.

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