The March 8 suicide bombing at the Special Intelligence Unit (SIU) building is believed to have been carried out by the Punjab chapter of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) to avenge the killing of militant commander Qari Zafar, according to a Pakistani daily.
Qari Zafar, the acting Emir of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), was reportedly killed by a U.S. drone strike in North Waziristan on February 24, 2010. Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a Sunni jihadist organization, is linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
According to a report in the Pakistani daily The News, a Lashkar-e-Jhangvi spokesman described Qari Zafar as a martyr and pledged to avenge his death in a statement faxed to Pakistani journalists on February 25to confirm Zafar’s death.
“The Mujahideen will soon take revenge from the Pakistani government for his killing by resorting to suicide bombings anywhere in the country,” the LeJ spokesman warned.
Qari Zafar joined hands with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and was appointed Emir of the Punjab chapter of the TTP, which is blamed for a series of bloody suicide attacks that took place in Lahore, Rawalpindi and Islamabad in 2009. These attacks include the October 10, 2009 assault on the general headquarters (GHQ) of the Pakistan Army in Rawalpindi.
According to The News, ‘‘Those investigating the... [March 8] bombing say the target of the human bomb, riding a single cabin van, was the... office of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) which had actually been created under the umbrella of Punjab Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID).’’
The SIU has been responsible primarily for interrogating hardened jihadists and sectarian terrorists arrested in the Punjab province
The report added that those investigating the March 8 bombing say that the attack might have been a coordinated operation to avenge the killing of Qari Zafar, who was working in tandem with a key leader of the TTP, Qari Hussain Mehsud, better known as Ustad-e-Fidayeen (teacher of suicide bombers).
Zafar and Mehsud had last appeared before journalists on October 5, 2009 in South Waziristan when the TTP chief, Hakimullah Mehsud, thought to have been killed, addressed a press conference to refute media reports of his death.
According to the report, several members of Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan, Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami (largely belonging to the southern Punjab) who fought in the Afghan war, have been working with TTP to carry out attacks against important government, military and police installations.
Source: The News, Pakistan, March 9, 2010
