Lahore, Oct 11 (PTI) Two alleged masterminds of the 2021 attack in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, in which nine Chinese engineers were killed, were purportedly shot dead during an attack on a police van in Pakistan’s Punjab province on Friday.
At least 12 people, including nine Chinese engineers and two Frontier Corps personnel, died and several others were injured in the bus attack near the Dasu hydropower plant in the Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2021.
“On Friday, two terrorists involved in the Dasu dam attack were killed by their own accomplices while they were being transferred from Sahiwal Jail, some 200 kilometres from Lahore, in view of a threat alert,” a spokesperson for the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police said in a statement.
He said that based on the threat alert of the Interior Ministry, five terrorists, including the masterminds of the attack, Muhammad Hussain and Ayaz K, and three others — Salim Khan, Abu Bakr and Latifullah — were being transferred from one jail to another.
In view of security concerns, they were being transferred from Sahiwal Jail in two police vans when unknown terrorists attacked one of the police vans to free their accomplices from custody, he said.
“As a result of the firing, two terrorists Mohammad Hussain and Ayaz K were killed and the CTD personnel remained safe in the attack,” he said and added the slain militants were facing life imprisonment.
According to a digital database maintained by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based think-tank, Pakistan has experienced an increase in terrorist attacks as 45 attacks were reported in September compared to 59 attacks the previous month. PTI MZ GSP GSP
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