Pakistan’s counterterrorism police on Sunday said a suspected suicide bomber linked to the Pakistani Taliban or Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) was arrested in a joint operation with an intelligence agency in the southern port city of Karachi.
The operation comes amid a rise in militant violence in Pakistan, particularly in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and southwestern Balochistan provinces bordering Afghanistan.
The Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) Sindh said Salman alias Abu Hurairah, who was an alleged key TTP member of a trained covert sleeper cell known as the Maulvi Mukhlis Group, was arrested following a police encounter.
“Today, CTD Sindh, together with a federal civilian intelligence agency, arrested the suspect after an armed encounter,” it said in a statement.
“A suicide vest along with photographs and maps of sensitive locations was recovered from his possession.” The CTD said Salman was a close associate of Zafran, alias Abu Hurairah, a highly wanted militant accused of orchestrating an attack on Chinese nationals at Liberty Textile Mills in 2024.
Salman was part of a group of alleged suicide bombers sent to Karachi following the killing of Zafran in a police operation, the CTD added. The CTD said Salman had undergone commando-style training for suicide attacks in Afghanistan and traveled to Karachi with his associate, Idrees, alias Asadullah, to carry out targeted killings and suicide bombings with other militants.
According to the CTD, two cases under the Anti-Terrorism Act and Explosives Substances Act 1998 have been registered against the suspect who is currently under interrogation.
The statement said joint teams of the CTD and an intelligence agency were conducting raids to apprehend the suspect’s associates and facilitators Earlier this month, the CTD Punjab said five suspected militants were killed in an intelligence-based operation in the country’s most populous Punjab province.
Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence in recent years, which Islamabad says is driven by armed groups operating from neighboring Afghanistan. Kabul rejects the accusation and denies allowing its territory to be used to launch attacks against Pakistan.