LAHORE:Law enforcers in Lahore carried out an operation in Sherakot area on Wednesday/Thursday night and killed four suspected terrorists involved in the suicide attack on slain Punjab Home Minister Shuja Khanzada.

According to police, the terrorists were identified as Amjad, Fayyaz, Sadaqat and Saddam.

Reports say the CTD conducted an intelligence-based raid on a house in Iqbal Town Division’s Sherakot area on the outskirts of Lahore. Four suspects managed to escape from the scene.

The provincial home minister was among 19 people killed when suicide bombers attacked the political office of the retired colonel in his native village in Attock district in August.

Today’s police operation comes days after Qasim Muavia, a key suspect in the terrorist attack, was arrested by the counter-terrorism department Punjab (CTD).

A CTD spokesman said the outlawed Tehreek-e-Taliban’s Qari Sohail group was involved in the suicide attack. The spokesman added that the mastermind of the attack was Qari Sohail who had sent the suicide bombers.

The involvement of Qari Sohail Group in the suicide attack emerged when the investigators found a motorcycle abandoned at the scene of the attack. The bike was suspected to be used by the bomber for reaching Khanzada’s dera in the Shadi Khan village of Attock.
The source said Muavia was aware of the plot to target the Punjab home minister.

The CTD had claimed that Qari Sohail was the mastermind of the suicide attack and had dropped the bomber close to the dera of the minister. The source said Qari Sohail used several other local facilitators, including Qasim Muavia, Amjad, Fayaz, Naz Zaheer, Talha, Imran Sattar, Sadaqat and Saddam, for carrying out the terror attack.

A spokesman for the Counter-Terrorism Department said the CTD and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) were jointly working to arrest the remaining accused involved in the suicide bombing in Attock. However, the CTD did not reveal the name and identity of the suicide bomber.

INP/AH/LK