Al Qaeda commander killed in Karachi

KARACHI: The police claim to have killed a local commander of the Indian franchise of al Qaeda in an encounter on Friday morning. Three accomplices of Sajjad alias Kargil, the commander of the Karachi chapter of al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), were also killed in the encounter in the impoverished Qayyumabad neighbourhood of Karachi, according to the police.

The police said Sajjad and his accomplices – identified as Muhammad Hashim, Yasin alias Yasir Arafat and Shamim alias Commando – had been involved in the targeted killing of half a dozen policemen and two bombings in the metropolis. A suicide vest, hand grenades and arms were also recovered from their possession.

The encounter took place when a party of the Crime Investigation Department (CID) raided one premises in Qayyumabad, an impoverished locality of the Korangi Industrial Area dominated by Pashtun and Hazarewal ethnic groups. The encounter happened at the same place where the wing commander of the Ghazi Rangers had escaped a suicide attack in February last year.

CID officials claimed that the slain AQIS militants were plotting a major terrorist attack. “They had been under surveillance for the past few weeks. They had plotted an attack on the vehicle of an intelligence officer,” the in-charge of CID’s Counter-Terrorism Unit, Raja Omar Khattab, told The Express Tribune.

The police said that Sajjad had come to Pakistan from Bangladesh in 2009 and obtained a national identity card through an agent before travelling to the Waziristan region. He was named commander of AQIS’s Karachi commander in 2014 after pledging allegiance to the group’s chief Asim Umar.

“Before joining the AQIS, Sajjad had been associated with Qari Zafar and Saad Ahmed Farooqui groups in Waziristan.

Since he was expert in assembling suicide vests and bombs, Sajjad was named commander of AQIS’s Karachi commander,” the CID official said.

He added that AQIS operatives worked in small groups – each comprising four members. One such group had made an attempt to hijack a frigate of the Pakistan Navy, PNS Zulfiqar, in PNS Dockyard in September 2014. 

Published in The Express Tribune, January 10^th, 2015.