News / Pakistan

Pakistan arrests Daesh female operative before Easter planned attack

Monday, 17 April 2017 4:03 PM [ Last Update: Monday, 17 April 2017 4:47 PM ]

Pakistani army's chief spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor speaks with media representatives as he gives details of a captured would-be female bomber in Rawalpindi on April 17, 2017. (Photo by AP)

Pakistani officials have arrested a female suspect working for the Daesh Takfiri terrorist group before she could carry out an attack during Easter celebrations.

The army's chief spokesman said on Monday that the woman, identified as Noreen Leghari, was originally from Hyderabad and had been hiding in Lahore to prepare an attack on the Christian community.

Leghari, a medical student, made confessions about her planned attack in a video, which was shown to journalists on Monday. In the video, the woman said the attack was planned on an unnamed church on Easter. She said that she had joined two men in Lahore to prepare the attack.

"They had two (explosive-filled) jackets and four hand grenades, and the jackets were to be used for an attack on some church during Easter, and I was to be the suicide bomber," Leghari said during the confessions, adding, "But before that, on the night of April 14, the security forces raided our hideout."

Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor, the director general of the army's public relations wing, said the raid on the hideout of the terrorists was part of a broader operation launched by Islamabad in February to go after the Daesh extremists. The massive operation began after the Takfiri terrorists claimed a series of attacks, including the bombing of a shrine that killed dozens of people.

Read more:

Bombing at Pakistan's shrine kills over 70

Since the beginning of the operation, some 4,510 suspected militants, including Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman and leader of Pakistani Taliban offshoot Jamaat-ur-Ahrar, have been arrested across Pakistan. The group was behind a major bombing that killed 70 people in Lahore last Easter.

Noreen Leghari, a would-be Daesh female bomber, is seen in a video confession shown during a news conference by the Pakistani army's chief spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, April 17, 2017. (Photo by Reuters)

Ghafoor said the terror groups were capitalizing on young Pakistani people to recruit operatives and carry out attacks.

"These kids are our kids. The youth bulge is our strength. When terrorists begin targeting our youth then you can estimate what kind of effect this will have on our society," he said.

The official denied that Leghari had received training from Daesh in Iraq and Syria before joining the terror cell in Lahore.

Ghafoor said the woman “was recovered from Lahore, which means she never went to Syria.”

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