Quetta: A woman with a jacket laden with explosives has been arrested in Quetta, the capital of the Balochistan province of Pakistan.
A report by news agency PTI quoted police officials as saying that the suspect, who has been identified as Mahal Baloch, was allegedly planning to carry out a suicide attack in Balochistan.
A Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) official of the Balochistan police informed the media that the woman was arrested from the Satellite Town area of Quetta.
“The woman was arrested on an intelligence tip-off, and a suicide jacket with explosives was also recovered from her bag,” the official said.
He said the woman, who is reportedly affiliated to the outlawed insurgent Baloch Liberation Front (BLF), was sent to Quetta for allegedly carrying out a suicide attack.
“The woman was arrested from near a park in Quetta’s Satellite Town when teams of CTD and intelligence agencies conducted an operation in the area against the outlawed Baloch Liberation Front. She had a bag with the suicide jacket that had four to five kilograms of explosives on it,” the CTD official said.
“We got an intelligence tip-off that the BLF had sent a suicide bomber to carry out an attack on a key installation in Quetta. We have identified her as Mahbal, wife of Bebagar alias Nadeem,” he added.
Last year in April, a female suicide bomber of the banned Balochistan National Army (BLA) carried out a suicide attack at the Karachi University’s Confucius Institute entrance, killing three Chinese teachers and their Pakistani driver.
The arrest comes days after a deadly attack by Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants on the Karachi Police Chief’s head office on Friday, which killed seven people, including three Taliban gunmen and as many security personnel.
Security forces managed to kill the Taliban rebels and clear the building after nearly four hours, with the help of police and the Sindh Rangers – a part of the paramilitary force the Pakistan Rangers.
After security lapses emerged as the cause for the TTP rebels’ successful entry into the Karachi Police headqarters, the Inspector General of the Sindh Police formed a committee of top-ranking police officials for a probe into the incident and to supervise the investigation into the case.
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