Jaish terror group's chief architect killed by security forces

Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed suffered a major setback when its operational head Mufti Waqas, termed as chief architect of terror strike at Sunjawan Army camp, was gunned down by a joint team of the Jammu and Kashmir Police and the Army, officials said.

Waqas alias Abu Arsalan was on radar of the state police after the February 10 terror attack on the Sunjawan camp in which six people, including father of a soldier and two junior commissioned officers were killed. Three militants were eliminated in retaliatory action.

The state police had developed the intelligence about the militant and this afternoon a small team comprising its elite commandoes from Special Operations Group and Army personnel stormed a house in Hatwar area in Awantipur in South Kashmir.
 

The entire operation was completed in 20 minutes, the police said, adding that several documents and other things were seized from the house.

Waqas was constantly in touch with his Pakistani handlers on the day when the Army camp was hit by the terrorists, they said.

Besides being the mastermind of the terror attack on the Sunjawan Army camp in Jammu, he had also planned a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in South Kashmir's Lethpora in which five CRPF men lost their lives.

There have been no civilian casualties or collateral damage, police 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.

According to officials, Waqas, a Pakistani national who had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley in 2017, 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 February 10.

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