Suicide jacket supplier dies in gunbattle

PESHAWAR (AFP) Military said Wednesday that a supplier of suicide jackets and explosives who operated a key inter-city network had been killed during a gun battle with soldiers. Two important terrorist commanders named Muhammad Tufail alias Abdullah and Muhammad Iqbal were killed by security forces in an exchange of fire, the military announced overnight in Peshawar.
The gun battle happened late Monday on the outskirts of Peshawar, a military spokesman told AFP.
The military said Iqbal belonged to Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban faction in the lawless district of Khyber.
He was a key supplier of suicide bomb jackets and explosives to Islamabad and other cities of Pakistan, the army said.
He was accused of supplying explosives for 21 suicide vehicles to Swat, where army launched an offensive last year to quell a Taliban insurgency, Balochistan province and other cities.
The military said Tufail, alias Abdullah, had been a Taliban commander in Nowshera, where he had been involved in missile and rocket assaults and a car suicide attack on an army mosque last June.
The bombing killed four people and wounded at least 90 others after a car packed with explosives ploughed into the wall of a mosque in Nowshera, bringing down the roof of the building.