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| India-Pakistan |
| Militants reap recruits for escalating violence |
| 2008-03-13 |
| Officials said on Wednesday the latest suicide attacks in Lahore mark a dangerous escalation by militants who are striking nationwide. A police interrogation report obtained by The Associated Press involving a previous case shed light on how militants find recruits and bring them to bases along the Afghan border for training. “This is a bigger attack and a different modus operandi from what we have seen before,” Azhar Hassan Nadeem, the Punjab inspector general of police, said after attending the funeral service for 16 policemen. “They (the militants) have an organisational network and the problem is quite huge.” Tariq Pervez, the FIA chief, said it was the largest amount of explosives that he had seen used in an attack during his 20 years in counterterrorism. “It indicates an escalation” in the militant campaign against the military and law enforcers, Pervez said. A report of the interrogation of a 19-year-old former seminary student named Omer Farooq who is accused of helping prepare the motorcycle-borne bomb used in the attack that killed at least eight people, revealed how he allegedly shuttled between his home village near Sargodha and South Waziristan during the planning. The report, made available to AP, says Farooq, who learned as a youth how to handle guns and explosives at militant training camps in Kashmir, confessed that he took orders from another Sargodha-based militant, Mohammed Tayyab, who gave him money to buy potash used in the blast. Farooq recounts Tayyab as warning them the plan to hit a military vehicle was “an order of the high command”. “He added this is jihad and this is what we must do to secure the blessing of God. He threatened us, whoever tries to ditch the operation, his head will be cut off,” the report quotes Farooq as saying. Sargodha police chief Waseem Sial confirmed the authenticity of the report. While investigators have made at least five arrests in the Sargodha attack, authorities have yet to get to the bottom of any of the three recent attacks in Lahore, which have rattled residents in a once-stable city, long renowned as a center of culture and commerce. “This is the work of mindless people, killing innocents. No Muslim can do this,” a citizen who lives near the attacked FIA building. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #1 Yep, I bet they've been combing the Jr. High Schools all month. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2008-03-13 07:46 |