Sunjuwan army camp attack mastermind killed by Army: Who was Mufti Waqas?

Mufti Waqas, a Pakistani national, had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley in 2017

Security forces on Monday killed Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist Mufti Waqas, believed to be the mastermind of last month's Sunjuwan terror attack, during an encounter in South Kashmir's Awantipora.

Acting on a specific intelligence input, a small team of the army along with the elite Special Operations Group cordoned off the Hatwar area in Awantipur and carried out a "surgical attack" on a house, the army said.

Jaish-e-Mohammed's operational commander Waqas, the mastermind of the terror attack on the Sunjuwan army camp in Jammu and the suicide attack on a CRPF camp in South Kashmir's Lethpora, was killed in the surgical operation, it said. Waqas's killing has dented the designs of the JeM as it comes after the elimination of the terror group's operational commander Noor Mohd Tantrey in the same area on December 17.

Who was Mufti Waqas

Waqas, a Pakistani national who had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley in 2017.

Apart from Sunjuwan, Waqas was involved in attacks in Pulwama district police lines, Lethpora and the BSF camp at Srinagar airport.

He was functioning as the operational commander of the terror outfit and had sent 'fidayeens' (suicide attackers) from Tral in South Kashmir to Jammu where they had carried out the strike on the army camp on 10 February.

Waqas was also responsible for radicalising locals Fardeen Khandey and Manzoor Baba who had carried out a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in South Kashmir's Lethpora on the intervening night of 30 December and 31 December last year.

Waqas replaced Noor Trali as commander of JeM in South Kashmir

Last year, Jaish-e-Mohammed's top leader in South Kashmir Noor Mohammed Tantray alias Noor Trali was eliminated in an encounter in the Pulwama district.

Trali, 47, was the main leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed in the South Kashmir area and was responsible for carrying out operations along with the Pakistani-origin terrorists of the group coming from across the border, the sources said.

The barely four-feet tall Trali was one of the oldest terrorists actively operating in Kashmir and was killed in a joint operation by the 50 Rashtriya Rifles and the local police in the in Samboora area of Pulwama.

The terrorist was convicted in a case registered in 2003 in Delhi and was serving a sentence in Delhi's Tihar jail before he was moved out to Srinagar jail after a campaign by human rights and sympathisers of terrorists in Kashmir.

As soon as he reached Srinagar jail, papers for his parole were approved and immediately he joined the Jaish-e-Mohammed in South Kashmir.

Trali went underground in July 2017 and soon became the key man of the terror outfit.