Former LeT commander Muaz alias Omar Kundi, who allegedly masterminded the May 2009 attack on the ISI headquarters here, has been shot dead by Pakistani law enforcement personnel.
Intelligence agencies located Mauz in Faisalabad city of Punjab province on the basis of information provided by one of his close associates who was arrested recently, a senior police officer in Faisalabad told PTI.
The officer said authorities used the detained associate to convey a message to Mauz that he should provide weapons for carrying out an attack on the ISI office in Faisalabad, located about 100 km from Lahore.
When Mauz and his accomplice Adil came in a rickshaw to supply the weapons yesterday, they were intercepted and killed by commandos hardly a kilometre from the ISI office on University Road, also called State Bank Road.
“Both Mauz and Adil were killed on the spot when they tried to open fire,” said the police officer, who asked not to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.
Muaz completed his MBBS from Punjab Medical College in Faisalabad during 2004-05. He subsequently joined the LeT and became the ‘amir’ (chief) of the banned group in the district.
“After developing differences with LeT chief Hafiz Saeed over the working of the group, especially after the Lal Masjid siege in Islamabad in 2007, Muaz joined the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi to work against former President Pervez Musharraf’s pro-US polices,” the officer said.
Since then, Muaz had carried out several terrorist strikes in collaboration with the Punjab chapter of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan that that targeted law enforcement agencies.
He was also involved in attacks on the ISI headquarters and the Federal Investigation Agency’s headquarters in Lahore and the police training centre in Manawan last year.
An officer of the Crime Investigation Department also told PTI that Muaz was heading a breakaway group of the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and had links with Al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan.
