Troops kill suicide jacket supplier near Peshawar

The 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 Mohammad Tufail alias Abdullah and Mohammad Iqbal were killed by security forces in an exchange of fire, the military announced overnight in the northwestern city of Peshawar. The gun battle happened late Monday on the outskirts of Peshawar, a military spokesman told AFP. The military said Iqbal belonged to Pakistan's Tehrik-i-Taliban faction in the lawless district of Khyber, which straddles the main supply line for Nato troops fighting against the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan. 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 northwest district Swat, where Pakistan 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 the northwestern district of 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 the garrison town of Nowshera, bringing down the roof of the building. Pakistan is under huge US pressure to eliminate Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants who pose a domestic threat and who infiltrate Afghanistan to attack Western forces fighting an eight-year war. More than 3,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since July 2007 a deadly campaign blamed on militants opposed to the government's alliance with the United States.

ePaper - Nawaiwaqt