KARACHI, March 6: Shooting by three men riding a motorcycle was the common factor in the terrorist attacks that took place in the city recently on three consecutive days.

Eleven people, including a policeman, were killed in the three terrorist attacks.

On Feb 20, three men riding a motorcycle sprayed Saghir Husain Kazmi, aged 35, with bullets in sector 35-C of Korangi. Kazmi had gone to Korangi to see one of his friends there. Quoting the family, the police said Saghir worked as a sub-editor in a local Urdu daily and his brother was a captain in the army.

On Feb 21, a police constable, Mithu Khan, aged 40, posted outside a Habib Bank branch in Korangi No 2, was shot dead by three armed men riding a motorcycle at the bank where he was posted. The assailants also took away the policeman’s official rifle.

On Feb 22, nine people were shot dead and seven others injured outside an Imambargah in Rifah-i-Aam Society. Here also three assailants came riding a motorcycle.

The police and witnesses said three men riding a motorcycle pulled up in front of an eating-house next to the main gate of Imambargah Muntazirul Mehdi in Al-Falah police limits. Two of them, armed with AK-47 rifles, got down from the motorcycle and opened indiscriminate fire on the eating-house and the main gate of the Imambargah, where people were entering to offer Maghrebain prayers. The assailants escaped on their motorcycle, leaving several people dead and injured.

Figures provided by the police show that sectarian-motivated killings had come to a halt in June 2002, but a fresh wave of such killings began again in February this year after an interval of nearly seven months.

Besides, a leader of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, Khalid Bin Waleed, had been gunned down on Feb 16, and two policemen were shot dead in an armed attack on a police camp next to the US consulate on Feb 28.

In February alone, five incidents of terrorism took place in the city in which 14 people, including an MQM leader and three policemen, were killed.

In the attack on the police camp at the US consulate, the police believed there were two more accomplices of the alleged assailant, who is in police custody. The accomplices were providing cover to the assailant, whose rifle stopped functioning after a bullet stuck up in his rifle and he was “incidentally” arrested by the Rangers.

If one believes the police’s theory, then three men were involved in this attack too. It is now up to the police to investigate whether the mastermind of the terrorist attacks are using hired assassins, or the planners themselves are actively taking part in terrorist attacks.

The major incident in which nine people were killed was, of course, sectarian-motivated. What is disturbing is that sectarian killings have occurred at the time of Muharram.

During the month of Muharram, the police have feared a rise in sectarian- motivated killings, which they had earlier ruled out following the arrest of the chief of the banned Lashkar-i-Jhangvi, Akram Lahori, and the death of Asif Ramzi, an extremist and the head of a breakaway faction of the Lashkar-i- Jhangvi. Ramzi and his three accomplices are believed to have died in an explosion at Korangi in December last year.

The police also claimed to have arrested jihadi elements who were allegedly involved in bomb explosions and terrorism. They are Asif Shadmanwala, Sharib, Asif Zaheer and others. High police officials were satisfied with the performance of their subordinates and were of the view that at least in the next six months incidents of terrorism or sectarian-motivated attacks would not take place in the city as they had netted the ring leaders of terrorist groups and their accomplices.

However, the way incidents of terrorism have taken place with regularity shows that the network of terrorists is intact and they have made the police helpless once again.

It appears that the terrorists took a break for a few months and now they have relaunched their activities and the police seem to be helpless to curb their activities. Now terrorists seem to have become so emboldened that they strike at their will and without facing any resistance.

The investigation wing of the police has so far failed to find a clue to the suspects in all the three cases in which 11 people were killed.

The home minister, home secretary and IG police have held a series of meetings where they discussed way and means to deal with the resurgence of terrorism, but their deliberations have so far not produced any tangible result.

Besides the common characteristics of three assailants on a motorcycle hitting their targets in the three incidents, the police have nothing to say if there were other similarities in the three incidents: whether the weapon used in the these incidents was also similar?

There is a security alert in the city and snap checks are also being carried out at various places, but still how terrorists carrying AK-47 assault rifles riding motorcycles hit their targets and the police fail to notice them?

All these factors should be investigated.