Key Pakistani terrorist killed in US drone strike

Qari Yaseen was also involved in attacks on ISI offices in Lahore and Multan and Marriott Hotel bomb blast

ISLAMABAD: A top terrorist accused of masterminding some brazen attacks – including the ones on the GHQ and Sri Lankan cricket team – was killed in a US drone strike in southern Afghanistan.

Qari Yaseen was targeted in Barmal district of Paktika province along with three colleagues when he was travelling in a vehicle, sources said. Yaseen was said to be involved in the 2009 attack on the Sri Lankan cricket team.

Yaseen, originally belonging to the Lodhran district of Punjab, had been involved in several terrorist attacks in Pakistan, including the ones on ISI’s offices in Lahore and Multan, GHQ in Rawalpindi, Data Darbar in Lahore, Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, and RA Bazaar in Rawalpindi, sources told The Express Tribune. Yaseen already had cases lodged against him.

He was said to be a facilitator for al Qaeda and Jundullah in Pakistan, an expert in bomb-making, and a trainer for terrorists.



Last week, US President Donald Trump gave the Central Intelligence Agency new authority to conduct drone attacks against terrorists. The United States was the first to use unmanned aircraft fitted with missiles to kill militants in the years after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

Critics of the targeted killing programme question whether the strikes create more terrorist than they kill

On March 2, a suspected missile-firing US drone killed two Afghan Taliban militants in a village near the Afghan border. A government official identified one of the men killed as Qari Abdullah Subari, a senior commander from the Afghan Taliban. An intelligence source said the other man was also a Taliban member named Shakir.