PAKISTAN police were placed on a high security alert today and searching for two suicide-bomber sisters out to launch strikes on government targets, police said. Police launched a huge hunt in the city for the two sisters aged between 18 and 20 years, following the disclosure by an arrested sectarian militant that they have been trained for suicide missions, police chief Tariq Jamil told AFP. "There is high alert in the city due to July 4 (US Independence Day), and though there is no specific threat we have been alerted by a militant, Gul Hasan, during interrogation that two of his cousins trained as suicide bombers will strike any day," he said. Security agencies have raided places in the outskirts of Karachi searching the two sisters, but so far have found no trace of them.
Police and paramilitary rangers have been deployed throughout the city while the US consulate, diplomatic enclave, western missions, foreign fast-food restaurants and sensitive government sites are tightly guarded, Mr Jamil said. Mr Jamil confirmed that the US consul general residence’s official July 4 function has been postponed. "The consulate officials have postponed the function on their own but we have no reports of any specific threat nor they have informed us," he said. A rocket exploded last week but caused no casualties, while another rocket and its launcher were found near the US consulate. Gul Hasan, of the banned Sunni Muslim extremist group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, was arrested in connection with the two suicide bomb attacks on a Shiite mosque in May in 50 people were killed. Mr Hasan told investigators that he had motivated his two female cousins to become suicide bombers. "My senior members will give them the target, which could either be a Shiite religious gathering of women, any police station or any official ceremony," Mr Hasan was quoted as telling his interrogators. "We have contacted their parents, who have confirmed that their daughters have been missing for the past five or six days, saying they were going on a noble cause," Mr Jamil said. |