Pakistani Taliban denies Imran Khan's assassination claims

Peshawar, Feb 9: The outlawed Pakistani Taliban has refuted former prime minister Imran Khan's claim that the outfit's militants from South Waziristan province were hatching a plot to assassinate him.

The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) asserted that it was waging a war against Pakistan's security forces and intelligence agencies and was not against any political personality. "We have received information that the head of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf in a meeting with the party's provincial spokespersons claimed an assassination attempt was being planned by the TTP, and South Waziristan residents have been tasked with executing the task," a TTP statement said on Wednesday as reported by news agency PTI.

Khan, 70, in a meeting of PTI spokespersons said there a plan was being hatched to eliminate him, and two people from South Waziristan region were tasked to assassinate him.

The South Waziristan tribal district is considered a stronghold of the TTP, and the outfit issued a statement to counter Khan's assertion.

Khan, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), suffered bullet injuries in the right leg in November last year, when gunmen fired a volley of bullets at him and others standing on a container-mounted truck in the Wazirabad area (some 150 kilometres from Lahore), where he was leading the long march to press for snap polls. On January 30, a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself up during the afternoon prayers in a high-security Peshawar mosque, killing 101 people and injuring more than 200 others.

Pakistan has been hit by a wave of terrorism, mostly in the country's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, but also in Balochistan and the Punjab town of Mianwali, which borders the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
During the Apex Committee meeting, Pakistan's civil and military leadership decided to seek Afghan Taliban chief Haibuttallah Akhundzada's intervention to control the TTP.

In November last year, the TTP called off an indefinite ceasefire agreed with the government in June 2022 and ordered its militants to carry out attacks on the security forces.

The TTP, which is believed to have close links to Al-Qaeda, has threatened to target top leaders of Prime Minister Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) and Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) if the ruling coalition continued to implement strict measures against the militants.

Pakistan hoped that the Afghan Taliban after coming to power would stop the use of their soil against Pakistan by expelling the TTP operatives but they have apparently refused to do so at the cost of straining ties with Islamabad.
The TTP, set up as an umbrella group of several militant outfits in 2007, called off a ceasefire with the federal government and ordered its militants to stage terrorist attacks across the country.

The outfit, which is believed to be close to Al-Qaeda, has been blamed for several deadly attacks across Pakistan, including an attack on army headquarters in 2009, assaults on military bases, and the 2008 bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad.

In 2014, the Pakistani Taliban stormed the Army Public School in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing at least 150 people, including 131 students.