KARACHI: The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Pakistan’s Sindh police said on Tuesday it had arrested an alleged hitman from the banned Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ) militant outfit from Karachi, recovering weapons and exposing what officials described as a cell involved in the killing of police informers and sectarian attacks.

Suspect Ameen, also known as Manna, was detained along with three accomplices, according to the CTD, after officers acted on “secret information.” About 13 criminal cases have already been registered against the group in multiple police stations across Karachi, the department added.

LeJ, an extremist group accused of numerous sectarian attacks across Pakistan since the 1990s, has also been accused of assassinating law enforcement personnel and political rivals. Karachi has experienced episodic waves of sectarian violence, with militant factions targeting members of rival religious communities as well as police informers in densely populated neighborhoods.

“In view of the recent targeted killings in Karachi, including the killing of police informers and sectarian murders, the Counter Terrorism Department Sindh conducted intelligence-based operations in various areas of the city and continued to pursue the terrorists for their arrest,” the CTD said in a statement.

“Acting on secret information, we carried out an important intelligence-based operation and arrested target killer Ameen alias Manna,” the statement said, adding Ameen had also been jailed in the past for “terrorism offenses.”

During initial interrogation, the CTD said, he “revealed that he, along with his accomplices, had killed police informers in Orangi Town as well as a young man, Adil Hussain, in a sectarian killing.”

The arrests come as Karachi authorities confront renewed sectarian tensions.

In recent months, police have reported an uptick in targeted shootings attributed to long-running rivalries between banned outfits and splinter cells operating in the city’s western districts.

In a separate operation last month, the CTD detained two suspected members of the Iran-linked Zainabiyoun Brigade, banned by Islamabad in 2024 for activities deemed harmful to national security.

The suspects, identified as Israr Hussain Gilgiti and Masoom Raza, were accused of involvement in sectarian killings and allegedly received training in a “neighboring country,” according to CTD officials.