A suspected commander of the banned outfit Daesh was gunned down during an operation in Balochistan’s Mastung area, the province’s Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) said on Wednesday.

In a press release issued today, a copy of which is available with Dawn.com, the CTD said it had received intelligence regarding a visit to Mastung of one of the leaders — Ghulam Din alias Shoaib — of Daesh’s Balochistan chapter to plan terrorist activity in the area and its surroundings.

CTD statements use the Arabic acronym for the Islamic State (IS) militant group.

It added that CTD personnel initiated an operation and surrounded the suspect, demanding his surrender. “He started firing and tried to flee the scene. But since planning has been done in advance so he was challenged by force and was killed in cross-firing,” the statement added.

It said he was allegedly involved in several high-profile terrorist activities in the province, including the attack on Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl leader Maulana Ghafoor Haideri, the 2016 suicide attack on lawyers in Quetta, the suicide attack on Jamaat-i-Islami chief Sirajul Haq, multiple suicide attacks on the Sibi Mela and Quetta police, as well as the “slaughter” of Hazara coal miners in Mach.

The statement added that he joined Daesh in 2015 after receiving training in Waziristan from the proscribed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).

The CTD said further investigation was under way in the matter.

Last week, the police said five alleged TTP terrorists were killed during an operation by the CTD in the Aghberg area of Quetta.

On Sep 2, the CTD said it had killed eight TTP and IS members in two intelligence-based operations conducted in Quetta and Washuk districts.

A UN report discussed at a Security Council meeting in New York last month had said the TTP and other gro­ups affiliated with the Taliban and Al Qaeda were providing Nato-calibre weapons to IS.