ISLAMABAD, Dec 23: Pakistan’s military confirmed a Chinese report on Tuesday that it had killed a Muslim militant recently identified by China as its top “terrorist” in an anti-terrorism operation.
“Yes, this man was killed in the Pakistan army’s operation on October 2,” military spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan told AFP, referring to Hasan Mahsum.
Gen Sultan however denied that US forces had been involved in the operation, as reported by the Beijing News on Tuesday.
“This operation was conducted purely by the Pakistan army and no American troops or personnel were involved in it,” Gen Sultan said.
He said Hasan Mahsum was among the eight people killed when Pakistan army commandos besieged a suspected Al Qaeda hideout in mud-walled tribal homes in the South Waziristan tribal district.
Two Pakistani troops were also killed and two wounded in the day-long gunfight at Angoor Adda, five kilometres from the Afghan border, he said. Another 18 people were arrested.
The operation was launched after credible information that some “foreign terrorists” were hiding in the area, Gen Sultan said.
China last week placed Hasan Mahsum, a former resident of northwestern China’s Xinjiang region, on the top of its first-ever list of “terrorists” containing the names of 11 ethnic Uighur Muslim separatists from Xinjiang.
It identified Hasan Mahsum, 39, as a leader in the East Turkistan Islamic Movement (ETIM) which it said was a “terrorist” group, along with three others.
It claimed the individuals and groups had plotted and carried out violent activities in China to try to set up an independent state of East Turkistan in the Uighur-populated Xinjiang region.
Beijing requested foreign assistance in arresting the individuals and shutting down the groups.
The Beijing News said Tuesday that Hasan Mahsum had been operating on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
When he was living in Xinjiang, he planned a bombing in 1995 and fled from China to Afghanistan in 1997. He joined Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization and established the ETIM with the support of Al Qaeda, the report said.—AFP
