KARACHI, 5 January 2006 — Police raided a suspected militant hide-out in southern Pakistan yesterday and arrested three suspects over recent sectarian killings, one of whom was allegedly planning a suicide attack, a minister said.
Security agencies also seized guns, detonators and explosives from the militants, identified as Maqsood Ahmed Qureshi, Azharul Haq and Nawaz Khan, he told a news conference, Rauf Sadiqui, provincial interior minister, told a news conference.
The three are members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a militant group that targets the Shiites and whose members were also implicated in the December 2003 assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf.
Most leaders of the group have been arrested since 2001, Musharraf banned it in a bid to purge the country of extremism.
“They are dangerous people, and one of them was planning a suicide attack,” Rauf said, but gave no other details. It was not clear when and where the man planned to carry out the attack, or who was his target.
Qureshi was wanted in connection with seven attacks on Shiites, while Azhar was a trained suicide bomber, he said.
“Nawaz Khan used to send Lashkar’s militants to Afghanistan for training and he was also a key financier of the group.”
