Pakistan Police Say Arrest of 13 Militants Prevents Terror Attacks

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Police arrested 13 suspected militants in Pakistan on Monday in two separate raids that they said foiled several terrorist attacks.The police chief in the city of Sargodha, Usman Anwar, said the arrest of six militants there prevented strikes that were to take place next week on foreign targets, politicians and two places of worship, The Associated Press reported.In Karachi, police acting on a tip from intelligence sources about an imminent terrorist attack arrested seven suspected militants from the outlawed group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, security officials said Monday.Saud Mirza, a senior Karachi police official, said the raid in Karachi recovered 3 suicide jackets; 4 Kalashnikov automatic rifles; 2 gas masks; 15 kilograms, or 33 pounds, of explosives; and 2 kilograms of heroin. One of the men arrested in a police raid in Karachi on Sunday, Muhammad Shahzad, whose nom de guerre is Phelavan, or the Wrestler, is believed by Pakistani intelligence to have been a close associate of Amjad Hussain Farooqi, a well-known militant leader involved in an assassination attempt against the former president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf.
Mr. Farooqi, who was killed in a shootout in southern Pakistan in 2004, also was implicated in the beheading of the Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
Mr. Mirza said the men were involved in drug trafficking to finance their terrorist activities.Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a sectarian group founded in the mid-1990s with close ties to Al Qaeda, has often targeted Shiite Muslims using suicide attacks. More recently, it has been active in the recruiting of suicide bombers in Pakistan and Central Asia. The group was placed on the U.S. State Department list of foreign terrorist organizations in 2003.A report this month from Jane’s intelligence group called Lashkar-e-Jhangvi “perhaps the country’s most extreme and feared militant group.”“LeJ members have traditionally assumed new identities and operated in small cells that disperse after completing their missions, making it difficult for the Pakistani authorities to completely eradicate the group,” the Jane’s report said. “However, many of its leaders and members have been killed or jailed in recent years and there is little evidence that it remains a coherent organization with centralized structures.”In a separate incident on Monday, gunmen killed an Afghan television journalist and severely wounded another on Monday in northwestern Pakistan, The A.P. reported. Janullah Hashim Zada, who worked for the Afghanistan-based Shamshad TV, was gunned down as he traveled on a public minibus from Torkham in the Khyber tribal region to the northwestern frontier city of Peshawar, The A.P. reported, citing a Khyber Agency official, Omair Khan.Salman Masood reported from Islamabad.