Captured militant planned to hit Pakistan elections

Pakistani officials said Wednesday that a key Al-Qaeda-linked militant captured in a shootout in the southern city of Karachi planned to launch terrorist attacks on rallies for next month’s elections.

The army meanwhile said 13 soldiers died earlier this week in an operation to clear militants from a road tunnel near the northwestern border with Afghanistan, amid a growing wave of unrest ahead of the February 18 vote.

In Karachi, officials said Qasim Toori, a wanted member of the Sunni Muslim extremist group Jundullah (Army of God), was wounded and arrested after a raid on his hideout in the port city late Tuesday.

Three militants and two policemen also died in the ensuing gunbattle — but Sindh province home minister Akhtar Zamin said an earlier interior ministry announcement that Toori was among the dead was incorrect.

“Qasim Toori is alive. He is in our custody and facing serious charges,” Zamin told AFP. Another three militants were detained, officials said.

The province’s top security official said that some members of the Jundullah cell were still at large and were being hunted by security forces.

“This very group intended to attack election rallies and put the whole election process into jeopardy in the province,” Sindh home secretary Arif Ahmed Khan told reporters.

Police had recovered a “ready-to-use” suicide jacket packed with 21 kilos (46 pounds) of explosives and pellets, 25 hand grenades and 12 rocket-propelled grenades with two launchers, Karachi police chief Niaz Siddiqui said.

Toori and another of the arrested militants were both wanted in connection with a June 2004 gun attack on Karachi Corps Commander General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, which left 11 people dead, Siddiqui said.

Hayat survived the attack, for which 11 Jundullah activists were later sentenced to death.

The two arrested militants were also sought in connection with a bomb attack the previous month outside the privately run Pakistan American Cultural Center in Karachi in which a guard died.

Islamabad, Thursday, AFP