SRINAGAR: Five days after the killing of Abu Ismail in an encounter with security forces on the outskirts of Srinagar, Pakistan-based militant group Lashkar-e-Toiba Tuesday claimed that he was not the chief of the terror outfit but a commander. “Mahmood Shah is the chief of Lashkar-e-Toiba in Jammu and Kashmir. Abu Ismail was a commander of the outfit and not the chief,” Lashkar spokesperson Abdullah Ghaznavi said in an emailed statement to newspapers here.
Abu Ismail, the mastermind of the July 10 attack on the Amarnath yatra in south Kashmir in which eight yatris were killed and two dozen others were injured, was killed in an encounter at Nowgam on the outskirts of Srinagar on September 14. After his killing, it was expected that LeT’s Kashmiri militant Zeenat-ul-Islam, 28, would take over as head of the outfit in the Valley.
However, there was no announcement in this regard in the last five days and Tuesday a LeT spokesperson said the outfit’s chief is Mahmood Shah, who is alive. “For India to get their hands on our chief, they must sacrifice a lot,” Ghaznavi said. His statement comes a day after J&K police chief Shesh Paul Vaid told the media that there was a vacancy among top LeT commanders in Kashmir though none was ready to take charge.
How to deal with Musa?
The Hizbul Mujahideen is confused on how to deal with its former commander and now head of Al Qaeda Kashmir cell Zakir Musa, who is based in south Kashmir. On September 15, five masked men claiming to be Hizb militants, in a video message, accused Musa of being behind the killing of militants in the Valley. Describing him as a ‘traitor’, one of militants in the video said, “We on behalf of Hizb want to convey to people that from last three months a large number of militants have been killed and none other than Zakir Musa was behind these killings.”
He alleged that Musa was weakening the “freedom struggle” in Kashmir. “He (Zakir) is misleading people by claiming to be a ‘mujahideen’. He is working as an Indian agent and facilitating killing of militants. For facilitating the killings... he has taken a huge amount from the government,” the militant said.