KARACHI: Pakistani police on Thursday arrested the leader of a splinter group of the al Qaeda, officials said, widely believed to be behind attacks on a top military leader in 2004 and on the Pakistan American Cultural Center in 2009.

Jundullah is a Pakistani offshoot of the al Qaeda, comprising fighters from the port city of Karachi whose aim is to kill or drive out religious minorities and establish a hardline Sunni theocracy. It is different from the Iranian Jundullah, a Sunni militant organization based mostly on the border between Pakistan and Iran.

Muhammad Ishaq alias Gul was one of only a handful of senior Jundullah leaders still on the run. Many of the group’s commanders and members have been arrested or killed in gunfights with police in recent years.

Raja Umar Khattab at the Counter Terrorism Department in Sindh province said the group was responsible for a spate of attacks in Karachi between 2004 and 2009.

“These deadly attacks included an attempted assassination bid on the convoy of Ahsan Saleem Hyat, then Karachi Corps Commander in June 2004, and [an attack] on the Pakistan American Cultural Center in October 2009,” Khattab said.

He said the group was also responsible for twin blasts outside the Avari Hotel in 2004, and the 2009 bombing of a Shia religious procession, which killed 43 people.

Khattab said Gul had gone into hiding in Afghanistan in recent years and in 2014 joined Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, a splinter group of the Pakistani Taliban. He was planning to reorganize the group’s activities in Karachi, the police official said.