Pakistan Army said on Wednesday that some military personnel were involved in helping escape defunct Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban’s (TTP) former spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan from the military’s detention, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.Director-General of the military’s media wing Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), Major General Babar Iftikhar, in an interactive session with foreign correspondents in Rawalpindi, said action has been initiated against the soldiers involved in Ehsan’s escape and the progress will be shared with the media soon. Maj-Gen Babar Iftikhar said “Ehsanullah Ehsan was being used in an operation when he escaped.” “The video tape linked to Ehsan is not real and his twitter account from which a threat was issued to Malala Yousafzai is also fake,” the ISPR DG said, adding “I don’t know the whereabouts of Ehsanullah Ehsan at the moment.”
He said the issue of missing persons will be resolved very soon. Some people have been arrested in connection with the massacre of 11 Hazara coalminers in Balochistan, he added. Safety of CPEC projectsBabar Iftikhar said Pakistan has beefed up security in Balochistan in efforts to protect the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects there amid the surging terrorist attacks by proxies of hostile agencies. Pakistan pays a lot of attention to CPEC, and after recent terrorist attacks, security for the CPEC has been beefed up directly and indirectly by providing more security to CPEC projects and enhancing security in the whole province to ensure smooth work at CPEC projects, he said added “We have raised two division-size security settlements which are dedicated to providing security to CPEC, besides that we have increased the number of paramilitary troops’ units from one to two in the province to ensure security,” he said.
Speaking on the security situation in Balochistan, he said that the capacity of the militants has been enhanced with using more sophisticated and modern weapons to launch attacks, but the military is going after them aggressively. The military has been carrying out intelligence-based operations against the militants, who are forced to come out of their hideouts in frustration and launch retaliatory attacks, but they are cornered and will be eliminated soon, said Iftikhar. He said that there was regrouping of small terrorist outfits in tribal areas along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, adding that the Pakistani Army has arrested a few in actions on tip-offs.
Also Read: Afghan Women’s Orchestra meets in Doha
