A police operation in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, has killed six members of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and wounded four others. A report quoting Pakistani police said this on Monday.
The Balochistan branch of the Pakistani police raided an IS hideout in Quetta on a tip-off, AFP reported. The staff tried to escape from the dormitory by anticipating the presence of the police. At that time 6 people were killed in the police firing, the remaining 4-5 people were able to escape.
A senior Pakistani police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the dead and fugitives were all members of IS’s Afghanistan branch of IS-Khorasan (IS-K). In addition to Afghanistan, there are also organizations in Pakistan.
Among those killed on Monday was Asghar Solomon, head of IS’s Balochistan branch, whose head was valued at 2 million Pakistani rupees by the country’s government.
IS carried out several major attacks in Pakistan last year. The most shocking of these was the killing of 11 members of the Shia Muslim Hazara community. IS beheaded them in an isolated and abandoned coal mine, 37 kilometers from Quetta.
The senior Pakistani police official told that law enforcement would launch an all-out operation to arrest the fugitive IS operatives.