Terrorism-related Incidents in Lahore - 2007

Date

Incident

1

February 4

The Lahore Police announced that it had arrested five militants of the proscribed Sunni group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), including one carrying a head money of PKR One million. Superintendent of Police Umar Virk disclosed that they had arrested the five militants, including Rizwan – for whom the Punjab and Sindh governments had put a bounty of Rs 500,000 each – from the Sattukatla area. He said that Rizwan had taken charge of the LeJ after Akram Lahori’s arrest. His accomplices were identified as Ziauddin, Alam, Abdul Sattar alias Riaz and Amjad alias Kala.

2

April 10

The Airport Security Force (ASF) at the Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore seized 14 kilograms of explosive material in a package being sent via courier from Karachi to Quetta, capital of Balochistan province. The ASF arrested an employee, identified as Muhammad Naeen, of the private courier company who had brought the packet to the airport.

3

May 14

Police arrested four members of an outlawed militant group from Lahore for their alleged involvement in bomb blasts and sectarian violence in Karachi. Police sources in Karachi, capital of Sindh province, confirmed the arrest of the four persons, identified as Wasif, Qari Faisal, Yousuf and Faizan, along with an unspecified quantity of ammunition and gunpowder. According to sources, they had recently received training in suicide bomb blasts at Wana in South Waziristan. However, the identity of the banned group was not disclosed.

4

July 1

Lahore Police arrested eight suspected terrorists with links to the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and the Taliban. The eight men are alleged to have been responsible for an attack on a missionary school near Murree on August 5, 2002, killing six Pakistanis and a grenade attack on a church in Taxila four days later in which four nurses were killed, informed Lahore Police chief Malik Muhammad Iqbal.

5

July 15

Lahore Police arrested four suspected terrorists, Mehram Ali, Muhammad Irfan, Haidar and an unidentified person, and foiled an attack on a mosque. Police recovered two 8mm rifles, rifle-calibre 0.444, 250 cartridges and thousands of bullets from their possession car. Sources said that the suspects had confessed, during preliminary interrogation, to planning a terrorist attack on a mosque. They also told police that four other accomplices were surveying a different area of the city.

6

July 27

Three people allegedly involved in a suicide bombing and an attack on a police check post at Matta in the Swat district of NWFP were arrested from Lahore. In Lahore, intelligence personnel raided a house near Niazi bus stand and arrested four suspects. One of the arrested, Aurangzaib, was later released. The rest have confessed to their involvement in the Swat bombing.

7

November 21

The Lahore Police have started monitoring the activities of the banned Al-Rashid Trust (ART) on the advice of intelligence agencies, police sources told. They said intelligence agencies had also asked the police to collect information about the assets and whereabouts of Al-Rashid Trust activists who had till now evaded scrutiny. The collected information may be used for a possible crack down on the Trust. "Intelligence reports have also claimed that activists of the trust were involved in ‘anti-state’ activity in the city," they added.

8

December 9

Lahore Police arrested a wanted terrorist from the Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan after a two-hour long shootout in Mandi Bahauddin. Muhammad Saleem alias Hafiz Bilal, a resident of Gujranwala, had planted a four kg improvised explosive device at the Bab-al-Imran mosque in Malakwal on June 30, 2006. Police also seized two Kalashnikov rifles and more than 2,000 bullets from the Saleem’s possession. Authorities had announced a PKR 500,000 reward for Saleem’s arrest.