‘Lyari gangsters providing arms and explosives to BLA terrorists’

Investigators probing the Karachi University suicide attack have found the involvement of Lyari gang war miscreants in providing logistic support, supplying weapons and explosive material and information of the targets to terrorists of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

On April 26, 2022, four people --three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver -- were killed and four others suffered injuries in the suicide attack carried out by a woman, Shari Baloch, outside the Karachi University’s Confucius Institute.

Sources say both the groups of Lyari gang war and Baloch insurgents usually were considered to be the rivals of each other, and in the past gang war criminals had given a tough time to Baloch separatists in Lyari and other Baloch localities of Karachi.

The sources have informed The News that both the factions made contact when law enforcers initiated an operation against Lyari gang war, and most of the gang members fled to Balochistan and bordering areas of Iran and Afghanistan and got refuge with Baloch separatists.

Nowadays, gang war members are not only working as ears and eyes of the separatists, but also proving them shelter in their areas, transporting their ammunitions. Including explosive material, say the sources.

They added that seven persons have been arrested so far in connection with the Karachi University bomb blast on the suspicion of providing logistic support and spying on the target. The mastermind of the attack has also been identified and he is residing in a Middle Eastern country. The mastermind had been continuously in contact with Shari Baloch during the planning of the attack and at the time the blast was carried out, as well as with her facilitators through an internet-generated number.

The sources say that woman seen in the CCTC footage in the last moments with Shari Baloch has been recognised, and law enforcers have raided her home, found literature and uniforms of the Majeed Brigade, a diary and some hand written scripts.

Law enforcers also seized the handwritten script of Shari Baloch from her last home in which she seemed to be mentally unstable and had shown suicide tendencies. These sources confirm that Haibtan Bashir Baloch, husband of Shari Baloch, fled to Iran one day before the attack and is residing now in a small bordering town along with his two children.

They claim that law enforcers found a strong link of Baloch women actively involved in facilitation for the transportation of weapons, explosives and spy activities, but due to the sensitivity of the country’s culture these women remained untouchable.

According to the sources, law enforcers had observed three tiers of the Baloch and Sindh insurgents, one includes spotters who always remained in the search of persons who could be militants or suicide attackers, and these spotters point out potential terrorists and refer them to motivators and mentors, which convert them to militants.

They say that after the fall of the Ashraf Ghani government in Afghanistan and as Taliban came to power, the Indian government had to wind up from Afghanistan, but it gave targets to its proxies to attack urban centers in Sindh, specially Karachi, and in future there could be more terrorist attempts in urban centers by these miscreants.