Pamphlets point to a new militant group in Pakistan

Ansar al Sharia Pakistan warns of operation ‘Radul Artedad’

KARACHI: Pamphlets were found on Friday from the spot in Karachi where four cops had been gunned down at iftar time, warning of a terrorist-led operation ‘Radul Artedad’ against security forces.

The Ansar al Sharia Pakistan militant group claimed responsibility for the killings through the pamphlets.

Composed on a computer, the pamphlets carry the message in Urdu, reading that the attack was part of a terrorist-led operation ‘Radul Artedad’ against the security forces.

According to the message, the attack was carried out in agony over the release of the bloggers accused of blasphemy, government ‘indifference’ towards Dr Afia Siddiqui, ‘fake’ arrests and encounters involving militants, and continued diplomatic and military ties with Iran and Russia.



The CCTV footage obtained from the crime scene shows that armed motorcyclists fired at the policemen and left the scene. They returned to the crime scene in a matter of seconds and threw the pamphlets and fled again.

According to the Counter-Terrorism Department chief Raja Umar Khattab, the newly-formed group has its roots in Libya. It was also operating in other countries of the Middle East while the US and the UK had already banned it.

“It has been formed the way the al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) was formed, by merging different splinter militants groups,” says Khattab about the new militant group.

“Organisations like these keep the name of the place in their title which defines their territories and creates a differentiation among them… just as the AQIS operates only in the Indian subcontinent.”



Khattab added that the new group appeared to have LEAs and religious minorities on its target list. “They will target the LEAs but there can be a rise in sectarian killings as well,” he said, adding that the killing of the four policemen might be the group’s second or third terrorist activity in Karachi. “Let’s see how far this story goes.”

Investigators suspect that the group was also behind the killing of a former military officer near Baloch Colony Flyover in March and an attack on a police van in Dhoraji last month in which two policemen had been killed and one was critically wounded.