600 suicide bombers present in Karachi: report
DPA, Khaleej Times
February 4, 2008
http://www.khaleejtimes.com/DisplayArticleNew.asp?xfile=data/subcontinent/2008/February/subcontinent_February107.xml&section=subcontinent

Six hundred would-be suicide bombers have been deployed to Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi to target security forces, a media report said on Monday.

Two top militants from Jundullah (Army of God), a Pakistani Sunni Muslim organization that has close links with the al-Qaeda terrorist network, who were arrested last week after a shootout with police in Karachi told investigators that most of the suicide bombers were former students of Islamabad’s radical Red Mosque, the Daily Times said.

In July 2007, Army commandos stormed the mosque and its adjoining Islamic seminary to end a siege by hundreds of armed militants entrenched there for a week. More than 110 people died in the raid while hundreds of rebels managed to flee.

“The 600 militants are mentally prepared and trained to carry out suicide attacks,” arrested Jundullah members Qasim Tori and Danish alias Talha told the police, the report said.

The militants also reportedly confessed to robbing foreign banks to generate funds for the operations.

Pro-Taliban militants are blamed for killing more than 700 people in more than 50 suicide bombings across Pakistan in 2007, many of which were carried out in retaliation for the Red Mosque siege.