Suspect kills cop in raid on home, escapes Siddiqi was mastermind of attack on MQM leader

karachi — A suspect involved in an attack on a lawmaker killed one police officer and wounded another during a raid at his house and he was able to escape from his eastern Karachi neighbourhood, police said on Monday.

Counterterrorism police officer Rao Anwar Ahmed said the suspect was wounded in the raid. He said Abdul Karim Siddiqi was the mastermind of an attack on an ethnic lawmaker on Saturday. The lawmaker escaped unhurt but a policeman and a child were killed. Police later shot and killed one of the attackers.

Ahmed said that Siddiqi belongs to a militant group and planned to assassinate Khwaja Izharul Hasan to ignite violence in the city. Hasan’s party the Muttahida Qaumi Movement has a history of violent reaction when its people are killed.

Hours after the early morning raid, Ahmed told reporters that based on an intelligence report, he had a team to raid a construction site in eastern Karachi, where four militants were holed up. He said all four militants were killed in an hour-long gun battle.

Ahmed said among them was a man identified only as Khurshid who was a cousin and close aide of Mullah Fazlullah, the absconding head of the Tahrik-e-Taleban Pakistan.

Ahmed also claimed that Khurshid was involved in the 2012 attack on Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani activist for female education and youngest-ever Nobel Prize laureate who was badly injured after being shot by a Taleban gunman.

Ahmed, who is responsible for the eastern Malir district of Karachi, is known for controversial shootouts and blaming those killed in them for involvement in high-profile attacks. Fazlullah and many other terrorists fled to Afghanistan when the Pakistan army started a massive military operation in the scenic Swat valley in 2009. Most part of the valley was captures by the Taleban since 2007. —