Five terrorists belonging to Al-Qaeda and TTP arrested in Pak

PTI, Aug 5, 2021, 6:00 PM IST

Pakistan’s security agencies on Thursday claimed to have foiled a terror plot to attack government buildings in Lahore and arrested five terrorists belonging to the banned militant outfits Al-Qaeda and Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) during raids in Punjab province.

The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of the Punjab Police in a statement said that five terrorists — two belonging to Al-Qaeda and three from TTP — have been arrested in different raids in the province.

The Al-Qaeda terrorists have been arrested from Lahore and identified as Muhammad Farhan, Muhammad Arshad and Mazhar Abbas.

”They were planning to attack government buildings in Lahore. Improvised Explosive Device (IED), hand grenade, prima card, detonator, a pistol 30 and ammunition have been recovered from them,” it said.

The TTP terrorists are identified as Attaul Rehman Farooqi and Muhammad Safdar who have been arrested from Lahore and Bahawalpur district respectively.

They were collecting funds for terrorism and planing to target law enforcers. Ammunition has been recovered from them.

The law enforcement agency said that keeping in view the recent wave of terrorism across the country, particularly target killing of police officials, CTD Punjab has conducted extensive intelligence based operations (IBO) all across Punjab to avert any untoward incident.

”In the last 7 days, CTD Punjab has conducted 59 IBOs in different districts of Punjab in which 49 suspects have been interrogated and a total of 18 suspects have been arrested,” it said.