KARACHI: Police in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday killed two Taliban militants, including the alleged mastermind of last month’s attack on the Karachi police headquarters, in a “shootout” with the law enforcers at Karachi’s Northern Bypass, an official said.
Three militants stormed the Karachi Police Office (KPO) and engaged in fighting for over three hours on February 17 before a counter-offensive by the police and military troops killed all three of them.
Two paramilitary soldiers, one policeman and a sanitation worker employed by the police were also killed in the attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, or the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
“Commander of the TTP Karachi and mastermind of the KPO attack Aryad Ullah and another militant have been killed in the shootout,” said Raja Umar Khattab, a senior counterterrorism police official in Karachi.
The police were ascertaining the identity of the second militant killed in the shootout that resulted in the arrest of two more suspects, Khattab said.
The police’s claim could not be independently verified.
The attack on the Karachi police headquarters came amid a surge in militant violence across Pakistan, particularly after the TTP called off its fragile cease-fire with the government in November.
The militant group has since targeted police and security forces in the country’s northwestern and southwestern regions that border Afghanistan.
On January 30, a deadly suicide bombing killed more than 80 people, mostly police officials, at a mosque inside a heavily guarded police compound in the northwestern city of Peshawar.
In December last year, Pakistani Taliban inmates seized a counterterrorism facility in the northwestern Bannu district, which had to be taken back after a military operation.
The TTP is a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban, who seized power in Afghanistan more than a year ago.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan has emboldened Pakistani militants, whose top leaders and fighters are said to be hiding across the border.
