Shootout at Sachal: Malala ‘attacker’ among four killed in Karachi

Khursheed, a cousin of TTP chief, was also involved in attacks on security forces

KARACHI: The police on Monday killed four suspected terrorists, including one allegedly involved in the 2012 attack on education crusader and Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai.

The four were killed during a raid, carried out on a tip-off, at Sadaf Society located in Sachal area of Karachi.

According to the police, the suspected terrorists opened indiscriminate fire when the police besieged the house they were holed up in. The police, however, managed to kill all of them.

Khursheed – a cousin of Maulvi Fazlullah, the fugitive chief of the defunct Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) – was later identified to be among the dead. Khursheed was allegedly involved in various terrorist activities including attacks on security forces as well as Malala.



“I am going to share good news with you that a cousin of TTP chief Maulvi Fazlullah has been killed,” said District Malir SSP Rao Anwar while talking to the media at the encounter site.

“Khursheed was involved in various incidents of terrorism, including attacks on education activist Malala Yousafzai as well as military and police in Karachi’s Quaidabad area,” Anwar said. “All the militants were members of the TTP-Swat and were planning to carry out terrorist activities in the city.”

Sachal SHO Shakir Ali said the police identified Khursheed with the help of the documents recovered from his possession. “The police are also trying to identify the remaining terrorists killed in the encounter,” he added.

Bodies of the suspects were later shifted to Edhi morgue. The police claimed that they also recovered arms and ammunitions from their possession. Further investigation was under way.

On October 9, 2012, a Taliban gunman opened fire at Malala and two other girls while they were returning home from school in Swat area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P).



The bullets critically injured Malala, who remained unconscious and in critical condition at Rawalpindi Institute of Cardiology. Later, she was sent for further treatment to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, United Kingdom, where she recovered and has been living since.

Malala, the youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate, is known for her human rights advocacy, especially education for women in her native Swat, where the Taliban had banned girls from attending school during their brief rule in 2009.