LAHORE – An off-shoot of al-Qaeda dubbed here as Punjabi Taliban carried out the sting operation in the Samanabad area on Thursday, it was reliably learnt on Friday.
Well-placed sources further revealed that the attackers, who launched the hit-and-run raid in the Rasool Park area and fled away leaving nine prison policemen dead and eight others injured, were most probably from South Punjab.
Sources said a key eyewitness of the incident, said to a local shopkeeper, had been shifted to an investigation cell to help the investigators identity the suspects. “The investigators are preparing the sketches of the suspects and the key witness is helping them identify the assailants,” a source close to the Joint Investigation Team (JIT) disclosed to TheNation, requesting his identity not be revealed.
“One thing has been established so far: the attackers belonged to South Punjab, not northwest tribal area of Waziristan,” a senior intelligence official told this reporter confidently, but confidentially.
Sharing further details, he said the six terrorists used three motorcycles (one Honda-125 and two CD-70s) and a car in the consolidated attack. “They were clad in trousers and shirts as well as shalwar kamiz and speaking Punjabi,” he added.
Intelligence sources believe that it was not possible for the TTP to send militants from Waziristan to Punjab since blockade of all covert passages linking Punjab to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and massive checking on the public roads.
“The evidence and eyewitness accounts collected so far strongly suggest the involvement of Punjabi Taliban in the attack. The militants in South Punjab, in fact, operate on the dictation of their handlers in Waziristan and Afghanistan,” he explained.
At least six gunmen raided the congested and densely-populated Rasool Park area in Samanabad, stormed into a double-storey hostel, and opened indiscriminate fire on officials of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Prisons Department at around 05:50am on Thursday. The attackers targeted under-training policemen in a commando-style operation and fled away within 10 minutes.
Punjab Inspector General of Police (IGP) Muhammad Habib-ur-Rehman has constituted the JIT – comprising officers from the country’s leading intelligence agencies, including the ISI and MI – to probe into the terror strike.
According to an official handout issued from the Central Police Office on Friday, the JIT has been directed to expand the scope of investigations and use all available resources to hunt down the terrorists involved in the gun attack on prison policemen in Lahore.
The investigation team has also been directed to step up investigations into the terror attack by keeping in view the similar terror attacks. The police have been directed to remain on high-alert round-the-clock to avoid any further untoward incident.
According to police spokesperson, the IGP issued the directions while addressing an urgent high-level meeting at the office of the Gujrat district police officer on Friday. Gujranwala Regional Police Officer (RPO) Capt (r) Amin Vains, CPO Kamran Yousaf and all the district police officers in Punjab attended the meeting.
The IGP is personally monitoring the progress into the investigation of the terror attacks and his urgent visit was part of the indepth investigations being carried out to hunt down the militants. The police chief said all the security and law enforcing agencies must play their active role in eradicating the menace of terrorism from the society.