Militants killed in Lahore shooting were IS fighters: by Ashraf Javed in The Nation, Apr 1st, 2016

LAHORE – Two of the five terrorists killed in Lahore police shooting were identified yesterday as fighters of the self-styled and so-called Islamic State, The Nation has learnt.
Thirty-year-old Junaid Zahoor and 26-year-old Saqib Kamran were the residents of Abbottabad district, where the US Navy SEALs had killed Osama Bin Laden in a special operation in 2011.
The identification of two of the dead was ascertained as relatives of the suspected militants reached Lahore to collect the bodies.
Zahoor Ahmed, a manual worker in Saudi Arabia for the last 30 years, said he directly landed at the Lahore Airport early yesterday as he came to know about the killing of his son Junaid in a police operation.
Zahoor states he spoke to his son by phone almost two and a half year ago. “I told him that you are not my son. Then the phone line was dropped.” “After sometime, I tried to call him back to state something but could not do that because he was calling from a PCO”.
According to the father, Junaid last time made a phone call at his cell-number in Saudi Arabia. “It was our last conversation. Almost three years ago, I had seen him alive. Today, I have come back to see him dead,” Zahoor said.
“I have been working in Riyadh for the last three decades. I was working there very hard to feed them. What he gave me in return,” Zahoor said with sobbing eyes. Junaid was the eldest in three siblings.
Five militant commanders including the two IS operatives were executed in a police operation in Lahore, just one day after an off-shoot of the group claimed credit for a horrific blast in the heart of the metropolis.
Jamaat-ul-Ahrar, an offshoot of the Taliban, which once declared loyalty to the “Islamic State,” group claimed the responsibility for the suicide attack in Lahore’s Gulshan-e-Iqbal Park on Sunday evening.
Reportedly, Saqib had been killed in a US drone attack somewhere in the northwest border region two and a half year ago.
“Even funeral prayers in absentia were offered for Saqib at his native town,” a young man who identified himself as a close relative of the dead militant told this reporter at the Jinnah Hospital’s morgue yesterday.
Some family members of Junaid yesterday helped police investigators establish the identity of Saqib. “They were friends and they had disappeared together, some three years ago” a relative said while referring to Junaid and Saqib.
He further said that Saqib, the son of a renowned doctor, belonged to a well-educated family of Abbottabad.
Following the Lahore blast, the spokesman of the terror outfit stated that the group would continue carrying out more such attacks to target schools, colleges, and govt and military installations.
“We carried out the Lahore attack,” Ehansullah Ehsan, spokesman for the banned Jamaat-ul-Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, told media by telephone on Monday from an undisclosed location.
Police sources revealed that the terrorists were killed in a staged encounter which took place at a house in a residential locality. Some of the militants were shot in the face while the others had sustained multiple bullet wounds.
While requesting anonymity a police officer said the militants were in the custody of the law-enforcement agencies for the last several months.
“Even if they were criminals and terrorists, they should have been punished as per law. They should have been hanged according to the law but extra-judicial killings are unacceptable,” said a relative of one of the dead. He also demanded “judicial probe” to investigate extra-judicial killings.
Interestingly, the shooting took place in a residential colony located in the Chuhng police area on early Wednesday.
But none of the residents heard the gunshots.
According to police sources, there was no sign of bullets on the walls or inside the house where, officials say, the armed encounter took place.
Media reports said at least five militants were gunned down in an encounter with police on Lahore’s Raiwind Road. Police claimed they also seized firearms including hand grenades, two Kalashnikovs, and three pistols from the militants.
The report further said that the Crime Investigation Agency’s (CIA) raided a house in LDA Avenue Society triggering an armed encounter with criminals that lasted for one and a half hour.Earlier, three of the dead were named by police as Wahid Khan, Nasir and Junaid Zahoor. Police are yet to ascertain the identity of the other two dead persons.
http://nation.com.pk/national/01-Apr-2016/militants-killed-in-lahore-shooting-were-is-fighters