The Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police raided a militant
hideout and killed six suspected members of a Taliban faction in Multan that has launched
a new campaign of violence in the country, police said on Thursday.
Since Monday, several bomb attacks across the country have shattered a period
of improving security, underscoring how militant groups still pose a threat to
the nation.
The CTD said its officers surrounded a
hideout of the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP)’s Jamaatul Ahrar
faction in Multan late on Wednesday and ordered the suspects inside to
surrender.
“But the terrorists started firing at
the raiding party and threw explosives,” a spokesperson for the
department, who the unit does not identify for security reasons, said in a statement.Six
militants were killed while three or four escaped under cover of darkness, the
department added. Two hand grenades, two automatic rifles and two pistols were
recovered.
Police acted after getting information that the militants were planning
to launch attacks on “vital installations” in the area.
The TTP faction claimed responsibility for a
suicide bomb attack near the Punjab Assembly in Lahore on Monday that killed 15
people and wounded more than 80.
The Jamaatul Ahrar said the attack was the
beginning of a new campaign of violence against the government, security
forces, the judiciary and secular political parties.
Since then, militants have killed two
bomb-disposal officers in Quetta and a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a
government office near Peshawar on Wednesday, killing five people. Also on
Wednesday, a suicide bomber on a motor bike attacked a group of judges in a van
in Peshawar, killing their driver.
The attacks have underlined the threat
militants pose to the government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif despite
military operation Zarb-e-Azb launched in 2014 to push them out of their
strongholds near the Afghan border.
The Foreign Office said it had summoned Syed
Abdul Nasir Yousafi, deputy head of mission at Afghanistan’s embassy in
Islamabad, on Wednesday to voice concern about Jamaatul
Ahrar “sanctuaries” in Afghanistan.
The government says militants launch attacks
from the Afghan side of the border. “Afghanistan was urged to take urgent
measures to eliminate the terrorists and their sanctuaries, financiers and
handlers,” the FO said in a statement.
Security forces killed two suspected militant brothers affiliated with
Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during a operation in
the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province,Police reported. The operation was conducted in Kolachi area of the district, official sources said.
The brothers were allegedly affiliated with the Qari Shafiq group of TTP's Zarar.
