RAWALPINDI: The Ministry of Interior has issued a countrywide alert asking for ‘extreme vigilance’ and heightened security amid intensified risk of terrorist attacks by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
The letter was sent to the chief commissioner of Islamabad, the home and chief secretaries of the four provinces, Azad Jammu and Kashmir, and Gilgit-Baltistan. To prevent any unfortunate incident, it encouraged all authorities to step up security and take extreme caution.
In a letter distributed last month, the Ministry of Interior issued a warning that the TTP’s unease was being caused by the fact that peace talks with the Pakistani government, which have been ongoing for more than a year, “had come to a stop.”
It was mentioned that the TTP blames the Pakistani government of not granting its key demand, the undoing of the merger of the erstwhile Fata with the KP, and of keeping TTP members in detention while a cease-fire was still being negotiated.
The ministry issued a warning that the group or its breakaway sections would also try to step up their terrorist activities in the upcoming days in order to exact revenge for the deaths of their commanders and to demonstrate their might in case of no further progress in the peace talks.
After TTP commanders Omer Khalid Khorasani and Aftab Parkay were killed, the federal government claimed to have learned that the TTP high command recently met in Paktika, Afghanistan, to discuss the impasse in peace discussions and the future of talks with the Pakistani government.
According to the notice, the TTP senior brass opted to relocate their families to safe locations out of concern that Pakistani security forces would begin a kinetic operation in the event that the discussions fell through. The warning warned that some of the militants’ families might be relocated to Karachi and its surrounding regions.
The TTP terrorists are reportedly trying to migrate from Afghanistan to North and South Waziristan in order to set up camp for upcoming strikes, which has drawn the attention of the interior ministry. It called reports of TTP militants showing up in places close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as well as farther inside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa “a troubling phenomenon.”
It said that Abu Yaha, Molvi Munawar, and Matoob Ali Jan alias Sailab, three recognized militant commanders located in Waziristan, had been in communication with the TTP high command in Afghanistan for additional instructions regarding moving to the region to step up terrorist activities.
