Mufti Waqas, a top commander of the Jaish-e-Mohammad, was also involved in attacks in Lethpora, Pulwama district police lines and the BSF camp at Srinagar airport.
The Army has gunned down the alleged mastermind of Sunjuwan terror attack in which six soldiers were killed, officials said on Monday. Mufti Waqas, the operational commander of Jaish – e Mohammad, who plotted the attack at Sunjuwan army camp, was killed during an encounter in south Kashmir’s Awantipora.
“Based on specific intelligence of presence of a terrorist in the area of Hatwar, Awantipora, a joint specific operation was launched today by 50 RR.During the operation the mastermind of the Sunjuwan terrorist attack and Letapore terrorist attack, Jaish e Mohammed operational commander Mufti Waqas, category A++, has been eliminated in a surgical operation,” the army spokesperson said in a statement.
The spokesperson also stated that there had no civilian casualties or collateral damage during the operation. “This has resulted in a major dent to the designs of JeM as after elimination of their earlier operational commander Noor Mohd Tantrey in the same area in Dec 17, his successor too has been killed.”
The Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists had struck the sprawling camp of the 36 brigade of the Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry in Sunjuwan on February 10. Six army men and a civilian were killed in the attack.
According to officials, Waqas, a Pakistani national who had infiltrated into the Kashmir Valley in 2017, was functioning as the operational commander of the terror outfit and had sent ‘fidayeens’ (suicide attackers) from Tral in South Kashmir to Jammu where they had carried out the strike on the Army camp on February 10.
Waqas was also responsible for radicalisng local boys Fardeen Khandey and Manzoor Baba who had carried out a suicide attack on a CRPF camp in South Kashmir’s Lethpora on the intervening night of December 30 and December 31 last year.
Waqas’s killing has dented the designs of the JeM as it comes after the elimination of the terror group’s operational commander Noor Mohd Tantrey in the same area on December 17.
(With PTI inputs)
