Four Al-Qaeda militants killed in Karachi

KARACHI, Jan 9 (AFP): Pakistani police on Friday said they had shot dead four regional Al-Qaeda militants including a senior leader in an early morning encounter in the port city of Karachi.
The leader, named as "Sajjad"-also known as Kargil-was said to be a Bangladeshi who moved to Pakistan in 2009 and specialised in making IEDs and suicide jackets.
He was also the Karachi commander of Al-Qaeda in South Asia, a new branch of the global militant outfit that launched last September, a local police official said.
"The Crime Investigation Department (CID) of the police raided a house in Qayyumabad neighbourhood in the eastern part of Karachi where the suspects were plotting a terrorist attack," the official told AFP on condition of anonymity.
Umar Khatab, a senior policeman in the CID, confirmed the killings.
"Sajjad came from Bangladesh to Pakistan in 2009 and lived in Waziristan where he swore allegiance to Asim Umar, the Pakistan chief of AQIS," Khatab told AFP.