Another Terrorist Wanted In India Is Shot Dead In Pakistan

Shahid Latif, one of India's most wanted terrorists belonging to the Jaish-e-Muhammad group, was gunned down by armed men, who walked into a mosque in Pakistan pretending to be worshipers.

At least two unknown assailants entered the mosque in the Daska town of Pakistan's Sialkot district and fatally shot Latif, 53, as well as another person.

Some reports said the second victim was Latif's brother, Haris Hashim. The three assailants had arrived on a motorcycle and fired at the two as they were leaving the Noor Madina mosque after pre-dawn prayers Wednesday.

The shooting of Latif was the latest in a series of India-designated terrorists mysteriously getting killed outside the country. Several were killed in Pakistan over the last few months, including Riyaz Ahmad alias Abu Qasim (a top commander of the terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba or LeT) and Bashir Ahmad Peer (a commander of the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen terror outfit).

Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh separatist who was a terrorist in the eyes of India's Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), was also killed this year in June on Canadian soil.

"In the last one and half years, 17 India-designated terrorists have been killed on foreign soil. Most of the Islamic terrorists, belonging to some group or the other, have been killed either in Pakistan or in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir. The latest one was Shahid Latif of Jaish-e-Mohammed, the mastermind of the Pathankot terror attack in 2016," Anshuman Behera, associate professor at the Conflict Resolution and Peace Research Programme at the National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS), Bengaluru, told International Business Times.

Local police said Latif's shooting appears to have been intentionally targeted. However, nobody has come forward to take responsibility for the killing.

Latif, also knows as Bilal, belongs to the anti-India group called Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM or Army of Muhammad) that has carried out several high-profile suicide and other attacks targeting India over the years.

A designated terrorist under India's UAPA, Latif is regarded as the mastermind behind the 2016 Pathankot attack and the handler of the four Jaish terrorists who attacked an Indian Air Force (IAF) base in Pathankot, killing seven IAF personnel.

The police said they have launched an investigation to find Latif's attackers.

"It will be too early to think that the Pakistan establishment has initiated an all-out attack on the terrorists taking safe haven in Pakistan. However, one can argue that the Pakistan establishment is selectively eliminating some of the terrorists safely living there to send out the message of its counter-terrorism measures," Behera said. "Arguably, the motive behind such selective counter-terrorism measures could be a desperate attempt to win the trust of the international actors."

Ayjaz Wani, a fellow in the Strategic Studies Programme at Indian think tank Observer Research Foundation, said the recent killings of these terrorists in Pakistan may also be an outcome of the rivalry between the different terrorist groups operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region.

"There are two reasons behind killing of terrorists of JeM and LeT within Pakistan. Firstly, there is a lot of rivalry between the terrorists groups who are omnipresent in the AF-Pak region and that has led to killings. This rivalry has increased a lot after 2021 within Pakistan as new groups like ISKP (Islamic State Khorasan Province) and older ones like TTP (Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan) are trying to emerge out a major force against Pakistan," Wani said.

"Secondly, JeM and LeT groups has worked in tandem with Pakistani security agencies from last forty years and are becoming the more soft targets of TTP and ISKP," he added.