KARACHI, 28 April 2005 — The Karachi police arrested two members of a banned outfit from the Orangi Town area here and recovered a large quantity of explosives and weapons from them, officials said yesterday. The suspects were members of the outlawed Jaish-e-Mohammad group, they said.
“It’s a big success for us. They were using this place to make bombs and plan terrorist attacks,” said police official Rasheed Khan.
One of the suspects picked up in the Tuesday night raid, Mohammed Nafees, was a prayer leader at a mosque, said another official.
The other, Mufti Yaseen, is a cleric wanted in connection with several militant attacks, he said, but gave no details.
The two had stored about 70 kg of bomb-making material, including gunpowder and fertilizer that can be used to make explosives, in the basement of their two-room, mud-and-brick home, Khan said. Police also found hand grenades and pistols, he said.
Meanwhile, an official said armed police commandos were deployed on trains traveling in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province yesterday, a day after bombings damaged a portion of a rail track and wounded three policemen.
Up to five commandos will guard each passenger train traveling through the province and metal detectors have been installed at stations, said railways police official Naeem Kakar in the provincial capital Quetta.
On Tuesday, a civilian and three policemen were injured when a bomb planted on a track exploded while the police were trying to remove it, said , a police official in Jafarabad.
