Lahore, Apr 19 (PTI) Pakistani security forces gunned down two members of the banned Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in an intelligence-based operation in the country’s Punjab province, police said on Wednesday.
The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) of Punjab police said it received information about the presence of five TTP terrorists in the Rajanpur district of Punjab, some 475 km from Lahore, with plans to target security personnel.
“A CTD team, along with Elite Force commandos, surrounded the hideout of the terrorists and asked them to surrender. Instead, the terrorists opened fire on the raiding team which returned the fire and in the shootout, two terrorists were killed while the other three managed to flee, taking advantage of darkness,” the CTD said in a statement.
Weapons and hand grenades were recovered from the crime scene. The two terrorists killed were residents of the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The outlawed TTP has increased the attacks in recent months and has apparently become stronger since the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban.
The militant group, set up as an umbrella group of several militant outfits in 2007, called off a ceasefire with the federal government and ordered its militants to stage terrorist attacks across the country. The CTD has since intensified its operation against the TTP.
The TTP was reportedly behind January’s suicide attack on a mosque here, in which more than 100 people, mostly police personnel were killed.
The group, which is believed to be close to Al-Qaeda, has been blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan, including an attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.
In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban stormed the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 150 people, including 131 students. On January 30, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up during the afternoon prayers in a mosque in Peshawar, killing 101 people and injuring more than 200 others.
Pakistan has hoped that the Afghan Taliban, after coming to power, would stop the use of their soil against Pakistan by expelling the TTP operatives, but they have apparently refused to do so.
The Taliban-led government in Afghanistan proposed in February for the first time to Pakistan that it should bear the cost of disarming and rehabilitating the outlawed TTP members and their families, numbering more than 30,0000 from the Pak-Afghan border areas. PTI MZ GRS GRS
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