TTP’s suicide-bomb trainer killed in Miranshah

Shakirullah Shakir was an aide of Qari Hussain who trained suicide bombers.

PESHAWAR:

A senior Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) commander who helped train and deploy suicide bombers was shot dead by gunmen on Monday near Miramshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal region, sources said.

Tribal sources told The Express Tribune that the incident took place at around 4:00 pm near the Qatub Khel area on Bannu-Miramshah road. Shakir, a resident of South Waziristan, was riding a motorcycle when unidentified gunmen in a vehicle with tinted windows sprayed bullets on him.

Shakir was a close aide of TTP’s trainer of suicide bombers Qari Hussain and had also served as his spokesperson for some time.

Fidayeen-e-Islam, an outfit within the TTP, was responsible for training of suicide bombers and was headed by Qari Hussain. However, the current status of the organisation is unclear, with some sources telling The Express Tribune that it has been disbanded.

According to the Associated Press, Shakir once claimed to a local newspaper that his group had trained more than 1,000 suicide bombers at camps in North Waziristan.

Shakir’s name hit headlines last month for issuing threats to Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. He had reportedly threatened the CJP with ‘dire consequences’ if he accepted the conviction of the TTP activists who were awarded death sentence by the Lahore High Court for attacking former president Pervez Musharraf.

Meanwhile, secret agencies arrested former Lashakr-e-Islam (LeI) spokesperson Misri Khan, now a dissident, from Shami Road in Peshawar on Monday along with two other persons, sources said.

Misri Khan and two of his accomplices were picked up during a raid and have been shifted to an undisclosed location for interrogation. The sources added that explosives were recovered from their possession.

Tribal sources told The Express Tribune that Misri Khan, aged between 45 and 50, belonged to the Shalobar clan of the Afridi tribe and had served as a Lashkar-e-Islam (LeI) spokesperson for around three years. Around a year back, he along with some senior commanders of LeI developed serious differences with its chief Mangal Bagh, leading to a split in the group.

(With Additional input from AFP)

Published in The Express Tribune, June 28^th, 2011.