Pakistani terrorist cells getting more organized

[dArKeR]

It started with a robbery, but the gang that burst into a branch of Al-Habib Bank in this teeming port city had no interest in striking it rich, and the university graduate driving the getaway car was just getting started on a master plan for terror.

The heist, carried out in daylight and with AK-47 assault rifles, is emblematic of a new brand of Islamic militant -- more educated but less established and largely cut off from traditional sources of terror funding, Pakistani police and intelligence officials told reporters.

Atta-ur Rehman and his Jundullah gang walked away from the bank in Karachi on Nov. 18 last year with just under 4 million rupees (US$70,000), enough to finance an eight-month wave of attacks against the US Consulate, a Christian Bible studies group, a peace concert by an Indian singer, a police station, and a senior Pakistani military general. At least 17 people died in the assaults, all carried out in the urban sprawl of Karachi, a city of 15 million that's honeycombed with terror hideouts and al-Qaeda safehouses.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2004/09/22/2003203869