With terror toll mounting,Pakistan law enforcement agencies began swoops countrywide,arresting over 80 people suspected to be involved in the recent spate of deadly strikes,including in the synchronised suicide attacks in Lahore which left 29 people dead. Keen to unravel the extent of involvement of Punjabi militants in the new attacks,security agencies took 36 suspects into custody from Lahore,where Taliban mounted three near-simultaneous terror attacks on security facilities. Twenty suspects were picked from Gulshan-e-Daud Colony in Manawan,where terrorists targeted a police training centre yesterday. Eleven more were detained from areas on Bedian Road where another training centre came under attack. Four others were nabbed from Temple Road where a gunman was killed while attacking a Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) office,and one more from the cantonment,police said. The police dragnet stretched to Karachi where authorities arrested 43 suspects,including four who were receiving treatment for gunshot wounds in a hospital. The police stumbled upon the injured suspects after they caught two militants belonging to Amjad Farooqi group,a Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan faction having links with al-Qaeda. The two militants were arrested from a house near the super highway in Karachi,sources said. A large number of explosives and weapons were recovered from the house and their arrest led the police to the hospital. "The agencies suspect all six were involved in the recent spate of terrorist attacks in Lahore and Peshawar and might have come to Karachi to hide and recover from injuries," the sources said,adding the authorities expected to make more arrests in next few days. The security agencies also caught 37 other terror suspects along with a large cache of weapons from a factory which had been abandoned some time back. The suspects were clad in uniforms of security agencies,TV channels reported. Officials said they belonged to Battagram in the NWFP and the Waziristan tribal region. As the suspects were grilled,Rana Sanaullah,Law Minister of Punjab province,told reporters: "We have taken a number of suspects into custody but we cannot give details until their interrogation is completed." A senior police official in Lahore said Qari Ishaq,an accomplice of yesterday's attackers,was among those arrested in the city. "A fake police identity card and weapons have been recovered from Ishaq,who was living in rented accommodation in the cantonment. He made calls from his cell phone to some persons in Waziristan," said an official. Meanwhile,police in the Pakistani capital today claimed to have foiled a possible terrorist attack by arresting two men with suicide jackets,grenades and pistols,hours after a series of audacious assaults in Lahore. The two suspected terrorists were arrested on the outskirts of Islamabad at 9.15 pm last night while they were trying to sneak into the city on motorcycles to hit their targets,police said. The arrests came as Pakistan was rattled by a fresh wave of attacks by suspected Taliban militants who stormed three security facilities in Lahore and carried out a suicide bombing at a police station in Kohat and an explosion in the NWFP capital Peshawar yesterday leaving at least 40 people dead,the fifth terror strike in the country within 11 days.
