Author: DPA
Publication: Khaleej Times
Date: February 4, 2008
URL: http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2008/February/subcontinent_February107.xml§ion=subcontinent
Six hundred would-be suicide bombers have
been deployed to Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi to target security
forces, a media report said on Monday.
Two top militants from Jundullah (Army of
God), a Pakistani Sunni Muslim organization that has close links with the
al-Qaeda terrorist network, who were arrested last week after a shootout with
police in Karachi told investigators that most of the suicide bombers were
former students of Islamabad's radical Red Mosque, the Daily Times said.
In July 2007, Army commandos stormed the mosque
and its adjoining Islamic seminary to end a siege by hundreds of armed militants
entrenched there for a week. More than 110 people died in the raid while hundreds
of rebels managed to flee.
"The 600 militants are mentally prepared
and trained to carry out suicide attacks," arrested Jundullah members
Qasim Tori and Danish alias Talha told the police, the report said.
The militants also reportedly confessed to
robbing foreign banks to generate funds for the operations.
Pro-Taliban militants are blamed for killing
more than 700 people in more than 50 suicide bombings across Pakistan in 2007,
many of which were carried out in retaliation for the Red Mosque siege.