LAHORE - Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is the lead terror outfit under the radar of the key security agencies’ probe for the Quetta Police Training School massacre, intelligence sources told The Nation yesterday.
Though an amalgam of terror outfits, TTP and Daesh, also claimed the responsibility for the attack in which 61 police recruits and two military personnel were killed, the initial findings of the key security agencies’ probe into the incident lead to the LeJ.
The footprints of the attack on Quetta Police Training School point towards the LeJ which has command structure in bordering areas at Pak-Afghan border and Afghan towns of Kandahar, Spin Boldak and Helmand.
According to the probe agencies, TTP and Daesh have claimed responsibility for the tragic incident while bluff of the LeJ may be to mislead the investigations. On the other hand, all leads of Civil Hospital Quetta incident in which nearly 72 lawyers were killed point towards LeJ.
There are incidents of joint terror operations by TTP and LeJ in Balochsitan and Karachi, but as far as Daesh is concerned, it has no command structure on Pakistan’s soil and its sympathisers have been neutralised before they could pose any threat to the state security.
It is the LeJ which has sleeper units and facilitators in Balochistan and Karachi. The terror outfit is mostly operating from Afghan soil under the command of Abu Sufian while its sleepers have been found in interior Sindh regions of Larkana, Sukkur and the provincial capital, Karachi, disclosed the intelligence sources.
The banned organization is operating from Afghan soil and parts of Sindh under the patronage of New Delhi’s RAW and Kabul’s NDS, they added.
Two of its top leaders of Balochistan, Usman Kurd and Dawood Badini, were taken out in an intelligence-led operation in the suburbs of Quetta in February 2015.
The security agencies are, however, also looking into the possibilities of LeJ bids to create a terror consortium in Afghanistan by connecting several small splinters of TTP and Al-Qaeda to determine its real strength.
LeJ is the executing force behind major and minor terror attacks in Balochistan, but it claims the responsibility for minor attacks and responsibility for major attacks is claimed by TTP. LeJ worked under the umbrella of TTP terror amalgam, but for the two major incidents of Civil Hospital Quetta and Quetta Police Training School, the LeJ itself claimed responsibility.
The terror outfit had carried out operations in Karachi while assisting the Al-Qaeda. In one of the key counter-terror operations in Karachi, led by a major intelligence service, two mid-ranking fighters of LeJ had also been killed along with an Al-Qaeda commander, disclosed the intelligence sources.
In an intelligence-based operation, two weeks back at Sabzal Road Quetta, two key sleeper cell members of LeJ, who were supposed to be connected with the Civil Hospital carnage, were killed as the security agencies couldn’t find any opportunity to catch anyone of them alive.
The repeated terror actions in Balochistan either lead to LeJ, or TTP or Baloch militants, but the deadliest among them is LeJ, they added.
Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Bugti told the paper that the authorities concerned are looking into all possibilities about the suspects involved in the gruesome incident. However, it is very clear that RAW-NDS nexus is behind terror attacks in Balochistan.
FC Balochistan DG MajGen Sher Afgan said after the Quetta police academy attack that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an affiliate of TTP, is believed to be behind the terror strike.