LAHORE - Security code in major cities of Punjab has been changed to ‘highly sensitive’ after several sleeper cells of the outlawed TTP disappeared and the leading state security services in the province succeeded in neutralising some of them, The Nation has learnt.
Sources in the security establishment privy to the development on this count told this correspondent on Friday that some sleeper cells of TTP terror network in Lahore, Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan and Bahawalpur vanished soon after the leading security services launched an operation against this silent enemy across the province and nabbed some of these sleeper cells.
They revealed that security code had been changed to put the security at the level stricter than its preceding one to avert any possible act of terror by the missing sleeper cells.
They added that manhunt was on to neutralise on-the-run members of sleeper cells that could carry out revenge activities for silencing their partners of high crimes by the security services across the country and in the operation Zarb-e-Azb.
They revealed that security services officials had extracted very important information from the detained members of the sleeper cells related to the similar sleeper cells. Some of the silent members of the terror networks, however, vanished.
After the announcement of a full-fledged military operation in North Waziristan, the security code in major cities had been changed as ‘very sensitive’, keeping in view possible terror attacks by members of the outlawed TTP.
Multan, Dera Ghazi Khan, Bahawalpur, Layyah, Jhang, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Sialkot, Gujranwala and Kasur in the Punjab had been identified as the strong pockets of the sleeper cells of the TTP.
It may be mentioned here that a massive information-gathering operation to trace sympathisers and financial supporters of the TTP started in the Punjab before the launch of Zarb-e-Azb in North Waziristan.
The operation was started in January this year, following threats of attacks from TTP and its allies across the country, especially the metropolitan cities.
Special sections of the country’s leading security services dealing with terrorists had been tasked to identify and break the terror networks in this operation.
In a recent incident, a sleeper cell, a traffic warden, was nabbed by the security services by providing actionable intelligence to the law enforcers.
In another incident of hunting down the sleeper cells, intelligence had been provided by a premier security service to law enforcers in Karachi for nabbing some wireless operators of the police who were passing on information to the TTP network in the provincial capital of Sindh ahead of a raid.
An information-gathering operation has also recently been started to identify the grey religious seminaries with possible linkages with the TTP network. The security services have detained some students of religious seminaries of Islamabad, Rawalpindi and Dera Ghazi operating as sleeper cells for the outlawed TTP in the Punjab.