QUETTA: A key `commander’ of the militant Islamic State group was killed in an operation conducted by security forces in Mastung district on Sunday.

Official sources said that the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD), along with Frontier Corps and intelligence personnel, conducted a search operation on an intelligence information in the Killi Mehrab area of Kanak in Mastung district.

When security forces reached the site where the militants, along with the IS commander, were present and challenged them, they refused to surrender and started firing. A gun battle started which continued for over an hour in which IS commander Mumtaz Ahmed alias Pehalwan was killed.

A CTD Balochistan spokesman claimed that Mumtaz Ahmed was the mastermind of suicide attack on a public meeting in Kanak in 2018, which killed over 140 people, including central leader of the ruling Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) Nawabzada Siraj Raisani. He was the younger brother of former chief minister of Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani.

Mumtaz Ahmed was also allegedly involved in the murder of 10 mine workers who belonged to the Hazara Shia community in the Mach area.

According to the CTD, the Balochistan government had announced Rs2 million as his head money.

“He was one of the first and most prominent commanders of IS in Balochistan,” the CTD spokesman said, adding that Mumtaz Ahmed was wanted in dozens of terrorist incidents, including the brutal killing of 10 Hazara miners in Mach and attacks on security forces in Quetta, Mastung and Bolan, targeted sectarian killings and bombings.

Published in Dawn, September 27th, 2021