New Delhi, August 22
Pakistan had initially sent militants to capture Indian bunkers in Kargil before the 1999 conflict began but later used them to assist the regular army, a media report has said.“In the Kargil operation of 1999, which almost brought Pakistan and India to an allout war, Al-Badr fighters were initially sent by the Pakistan Army to occupy Indian bunkers,” a report in Asia Times said.
“Later, another ISI connection, the recently arrested (Maulana Fazlur Rehman) Khalil, and his fighters battled side-by-side with (Jamaat-i-Islami leader Bakhat Zameen) Khan and the Pakistan Army against the Indian forces,” it said.
A “top Pakistani jihadi” Khalil was recently arrested along with another militant leader Qari Saifullah Akhtar by the Pakistani security forces as part of the US-led war against terror. Khalil is also the chief of the militant outfit, Harkat-ul Ansar.
Harkat-ul Ansar was “a signatory of a ruling issued by Osama bin Laden in 1998 in which he announced war against the USA after the Americans fired cruise missiles on Afghanistan in retaliation for Al-Qaida attacks on US embassies in Africa”.
Khalil had publicly denounced the US and vowed to take revenge for the killing of several Harkat members in these missile attacks.
— PTI
