KARACHI, 22 June 2006 — Pakistani police said yesterday they had arrested a senior leader of an outlawed extremist group wanted for killing more than 150 people.
Usman Kurd, allegedly from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi organization, was seized in Mauripur district of the southern port city of Karachi, police officer Fayyaz Khan told AFP. Some weapons were also recovered, he said.
“He was among the most dangerous Lashkar-e-Jhangvi militants and was trained in Afghanistan during the Taleban regime,” Khan said, adding that police were investigating whether he was still in contact with the Taleban. Police said Kurd was the group’s chief for Pakistan’s troubled southwestern province of Balochistan, where he allegedly orchestrated two deadly attacks on the Shiite community.
A 2003 suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque in Quetta, the provincial capital, left more than 50 people dead while at least 48 were killed in a suicide and gun attack on a Shiite procession in 2004. Karachi, where Kurd was arrested, is in Sindh province and officials said the suspect may be handed over to police in neighboring Balochistan after initial questioning. A special investigation team from Quetta arrived in Karachi. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi emerged in the 1990s and is regarded as Pakistan’s most violent underground outfit with links to Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda terror network.
Police arrested six suspects from the group in the central city of Multan last week.
Bomb Kills Three Troops
A roadside bomb in Pakistan’s North Waziristan region on the Afghan border killed three paramilitary troops and wounded three yesterday, a government official said.
Pakistani security forces are battling Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants and their Pakistani allies in North Waziristan and hundreds of people have been killed in the past two years.
Earlier yesterday, a military helicopter crashed into a reservoir in the region. Three soldiers were rescued but four were killed, the military said. The bomb hit a paramilitary convoy patrolling near the town of Mir Ali, said Fida Mohammad Khan, a top administrator in North Waziristan. “Three troops are confirmed dead,” he said.
Many Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants fled to Pakistan’s semi-autonomous border after the Taleban were ousted in Afghanistan in 2001. They were given refuge by ethnic Pashtun tribesmen who live on both sides of the border. Pakistan, an important US ally in its war on terrorism, has vowed to clear foreign militants from the area and subdue their Pakistani allies. The cause of the helicopter crash near the northwestern town of Bannu was not immediately known but a military spokesman said it was apparently because of a technical fault. An investigation was under way.
Hashish Seized
Pakistani customs authorities yesterday seized nearly a ton of hashish from a truck carrying fruit from neighboring Afghanistan, officials said. “We have recovered 900 kilograms of hashish concealed in some fruit crates,” customs official Hayatullah Durrani told AFP, adding that the driver and another man fled the scene.
