The five suspected terrorists killed in the Hayatabad operation last week were involved in various terrorism incidents, including an attack on a judge, the Peshawar police chief said on Monday.
A week after a 17-hour standoff in Peshawar saw five suspected terrorists killed, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) of Peshawar Qazi Jamil and Counter-Terrorism Department’s (CTD) Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Abdul Ghafoor Afridi gave a briefing to the media.
“It was a gang, a network, that was operating here,” CCPO Jamil said. “There were six of them, five of which were killed and one arrested injured.
“[One of the dead’s] name is Amjad and he was a resident of Khyber district. He was involved in all major incidents. He had been to Afghanistan five times, and also went to Dubai and Greece, from where he was deported.
“Such individuals previously used to sneak in from Afghanistan but now they are using passports. To detect them is difficult and that is exactly what happened here.”
The CCPO said that two security officials had been martyred in the operation, identifying them as ASI Qamar Alam and Lance Naik Zafar Iqbal.
The official said that the sole surviving suspect from the operation is a man named Saeed, who “is injured and in the CTD’s remand”.
The CCPO said that weapons seized in the Hayatabad incident were the same ones used in the attack on Peshawar High Court (PHC) judge Justice Ayub Khan’s car earlier this year.
He said that the house targetted during the operation last week was booby-trapped till the basement, whereas a motorbike on the property had been rigged with a bomb.
CCPO Jamil said that the suspected terrorists also had grenades, which they hurled at police and armed forces. He further said that police was fired upon as soon as it entered the house, due to which ASI got martyred.
The officials said that they the police not want to raze the house to the ground, adding that “happened when an improvised explosive device (IED) found at the house was defused”.
