The Pakistani military killed a dangerous Taliban commander who was responsible for the murders of scores of Pakistani soldiers, policemen, and civilians.
Qari Kamran, a senior Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan commander in the northwestern district of Nowshera, was killed along with 11 fighters yesterday during a military operation in the tribal agency of Khyber. The Taliban have been fighting the Pakistani military as well as the rival Islamist terror group Lashkar-e-Islam in Khyber.
Kamran was involved in some of the most deadly suicide attacks and ambushes in northwestern Pakistan over the past several years. The most devastating attack took place on May 13, 2011, when a suicide bomber detonated among a crowd of newly trained troops of Pakistan's paramilitary Frontier Corps at a training center in Shabqadar in the neighboring district of Charsadda. The suicide attack was followed by a car bomb. More than 80 Pakistani troops and civilians were killed in the twin blasts.
The Taliban claimed credit for the horrific attack and said it was carried out to avenge the death of al Qaeda emir Osama bin Laden, who was killed by US special operations forces in Abbottabad, Pakistan, on May 2, 2011.
The Shabqadar attack was followed by the June 5, 2011 suicide attack at the Nowshera Cantonment that killed 18 Pakistani soldiers.
In addition to attacking Pakistani security forces, Kamran was also involved in targeting anti-Taliban militias in Nowshera. Three such attacks in the past year have taken place in mosques. In the last attack, on Nov. 19, Kamran's fighters gunned down an outspoken mosque imam who was vocal in opposition to the Taliban. Another attack, on June 12, killed six people and leveled the mosque.
Sources: Allvoices, Pakistan Today