Peshawar: A senior Taliban commander, believed to be a key planner in the Peshawar school massacre, has been killed by the security forces in Pakistan's troubled Khyber Agency. "Saddam had been killed in the Gundi area of Jamrud by the security forces in an operation yesterday. One of his accomplices has been captured alive," Peshawar Political Agent of Khyber Agency Shahab Ali Shah said.
A member of the Tariq Gedar group of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), Saddam had facilitated the seven attackers who had attacked the Army Public School in Peshawar on December 16 and killed over 160 people, mostly children. Saddam was also planner of killing of 11 security personnel and eight scouts in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2013.
He was also said to be the mastermind behind the 2013 attack on a polio team in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa which killed 11 security personnel
Saddam was also involved in killing eight scouts personnel along with the deaths of various of tribal elders, Shah said.
He also said that Operation Khyber One had extended to other areas of Khyber Agency and that militants are being hunted down.
Intensifying their efforts to counter militants in Khyber, security forces have upped action in the region in October.
One of the other key planners of the Peshawar massacre had threatened of more attacks, if the military and the intelligence agencies do not stop anti-terror operations. In a video with posted on Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) website, Umar Mansoor said that the attack Army Public School which killed over 160 people, including 132 children, was in retaliation to army operations.
Security agencies had intercepted communication between Umar Mansoor, also known as Khalifa Umar and Umar Narey, and the suicide squad during the seven-hour shooting spree at the school that helped identify him as the main handler.
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