Islamabad, Dec 29 (IANS) Pakistani Taliban have established an all-women wing of suicide bombers to carry out terror missions across the country, dramatically revealed a 12-year-old girl who managed to escape from the clutches of the rebels from near the Afghanistan border.
Meena Gul’s brother, a Taliban commander, told her: ‘You will go to heaven before any of us, if you blow up yourself the way I tell you.’
The Express Tribune reported Wednesday that the girl was caught by security personnel from the Munda area near Dir district in January this year. The statements she gave nearly 11 months back came true following a woman’s suicide bombing in Dec 25 that killed 46 people in Bajaur.
Meena Gul managed to escape from the Taliban guerrillas when militants’ hideouts were reduced to rubble in a bombardment.
She spoke about a women’s wing of the Taliban waiting to carry out suicide attacks.
‘My sister-in-law, Zainab, was responsible for their training. She escorted eight women from our village to Afghanistan,’ Gul told the Express Tribune.
Zainab fought Pakistani security forces dressed as a man.
Gul added: ‘My younger sister blew herself up in a suicide attack in Afghanistan. I, however, managed to escape. I was too scared.’
A resident of Afghanistan, Meena Gul’s family had travelled across Pakistan, residing in Karachi, Lahore and refugee camps in Peshawar, police records show.
Before the Dec 25 attack by a woman suicide bomber, the last such suicide attack by a woman was in December 2007 when she blew up herself at a checkpoint in Peshawar. The woman in her thirties, wearing a burqa, was the only casualty.
The media report said that the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan has always acknowledged their women’s wing.
The women’s wing has been mentioned in the radio broadcasts of Maulvi Faqir Muhammad in Bajaur and the absconding chief of the TTP chapter in Swat, Maulana Fazlullah.
