SRI NAGAR: Ten days after the killing of its chief in Kashmir Abdur Rehman alias Abu Qasim in a gunfight with security forces, terror outfit Lashkar-e-Toiba on Tuesday announced the appointment of Abu Musa alias Hafiz as its new Kashmir chief.
“Lashkar chief Mahmood Shah has appointed Abu Musa alias Hafiz as chief of outfit in Kashmir,” LeT spokesman Abdullah Ghaznavi told news agencies in Srinagar.
He said all LeT militants in the Valley have been directed to obey orders of Musa. Musa’s predecessor Abu Qasim, who was the most wanted militant in the Valley and carried a `20 lakh-bounty on his head, was killed in a brief gunfight with the security forces in Khandaypora area of South Kashmir’s Kulgam district on October 30.
Qasim, a Pakistani militant, was active in the Valley for five years and was the brain behind almost all the attacks, including the August 5 outrage on a BSF convoy in Udhampur on Srinagar-Jammu national highway in which two BSF men and a Pakistani militant were killed and another Pakistani militant Mohammad Naved arrested.
Qasim had also carried out the June 2013 attack on Army convoy at Hyderpora area on Srinagar in which eight Army men were killed and 17 others were injured. After Qasim’s killing, it was expected that his deputy Abu Dujana, a Pakistani militant in his mid-twenties, would take over as Lashkar chief in the Valley and look after its operations.