Pakistan police and counterterrorism officials stopped an al-Qaida terrorist attack on the country’s Intelligence Bureau in Kala Shah Kaku, near Lahore, in July 2015.
Officials killed four terrorists and arrested two more. One of the dead was a man believed to be leading al-Qaida terrorists in Pakistan. The raid also uncovered a cache of weapons that included suicide bombing jackets, rocket launchers, AK-47s, hand grenades, bullets and diagrams of buildings.
The operation was part of the country’s broader Zarb-e-Azb counterterror operation that began a little more than a year after terrorists attacked Karachi’s Jinnah International Airport. Zarb-e-Azb means sharp strike, with the additional reference of “Azb” as the name of the sword used in battle by the Islamic Prophet Muhammad. Between June 2014 and July 2015, the Pakistani Army announced the deaths of more than 2,700 terrorists in a major counterterrorism operation in North Waziristan.
Sources: Agence France-Presse, Pakistan Today, Reuters, The Associated Press