LAHORE:
Four people killed and others arrested in a joint raid by
security and intelligence agencies at a house in Kala Shah Kaku on June
29 were associated with al Qaeda, Home Minister Col (r) Shuja Khanzada
said at a press conference on Wednesday.
He said one of the four killed in the raid was believed to be al
Qaeda’s leader in Pakistan. He was identified as Abdali. Two others had
belonged to the Punjab. They were identified as Faisal Mubashir, a
Faisalabad resident, and Saqib Hussain, a Rawalpindi resident. The
fourth was identified as Muhammad Nauman, a Tank resident. The suspects
arrested in the raid were identified as Hamza and Abdullah.Khanzada said the suspects had arrived in the city to undertake a terrorist attack at the Intelligence Bureau headquarters on The Mall. He said based on information obtained from the two suspects teams had been sent to Karachi, Rawalpindi and Faisalabad to track down their accomplices.
Khanzada said a week before the raid provincial agencies had been alerted by the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) about the possible arrival of the suspects in the city. He said according to the intelligence report three suspects had left Wana, South Waziristan, for Dera Ismail Khan. He said two of them had boarded a bus for Lahore on June 24. Their third accomplice had returned to Wana. He said the two suspects had spent two days at a Tableghi Jamat facility before moving to the house in Al-Raheem Housing Society, Al-Kareem Town, where the raid took place. He said the house had been rented by one of their accomplices for Rs5,000 a month.
