Eight Ansarul Sharia Pakistan (ASP) terrorists, including the outfit’s chief, were gunned down early on October 22. Terrorist group’s chief, Shaharyaruddin Warsi, had been killed in the raid, and that four terrorists had managed to escape.
The ASP through its twitter account and the internet had claimed that their members also belonged to south Punjab, Balochistan and Waziristan as well. Sources in the police said that the group had claimed responsibility for one or two terror attacks in Balochistan, but its claims remained “doubtful”.
About other findings of the investigation, the sources said some pamphlets thrown after targeted killings in the metropolis had the flag of Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent on its one corner and the IS flag on the other. Since they preferred Urdu language in the pamphlets, the security officials assumed that there could be involvement of some youths of Karachi in the attacks.
The kind of language they had used in the pamphlets also gave an idea to the law enforcers that the militants were educated with sound technical knowledge of media. The sources said that in their pamphlets, the ASP had declared that they would target only security officials and particularly in one case in the SITE area in Ramazan where four policemen were shot dead, the members of this outfit did not target a witness, instead, they allowed him to escape.
Apart from the said four terror acts (killing of the security guard in Gulistan-i-Jauhar, retired army officer in the Baloch Colony area, murder of four policemen in SITE and assassination attempt on life of the MQM leader), the officials also claimed that the ASP was involved in four other incidents.
These included targeted killing of two policemen within the limits of the New Town police, murder of DSP Traffic and his constable driver in Azizabad, a Police Qaumi Razakar on the Northern Bypass and two employees of the Federal Board of Revenue in Gulistan-i-Jauhar who were targeted over suspicions of being policemen as the victims wore uniforms resembling police uniform. Besides Warsi and Arsalan Baig, he identified the other dead terrorists as Mehrul Haq, Saad Jamal, Hasaan Haroon, Talha Ansari, Kamran Riaz and Abu Bakr.