Unidentified gunmen shot Amir Hamza, a founding member of the terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which is located in Pakistan, in Lahore. He is reportedly in critical condition and has been admitted to the hospital.
The assault happened in front of a city news station office. Following a similar incident outside his home in May of last year, Hamza has been targeted twice in less than a year. Pakistani authorities apparently tightened his protection following the attack, but they remained silent about it.
Hamza, a soldier of the Afghan jihad, was born in Gujranwala, Punjab province, on May 10, 1959. Between 1985 and 1986, he and Hafiz Saeed co-founded LeT.
He has been connected to several terrorist acts in India and elsewhere over the years, including the 2005 attack on Bangalore’s Indian Institute of Science, which was one of the first significant LeT attacks outside of Kashmir.Forecasts for India’s economy
Hamza, who is regarded as the organization’s second most senior leader behind Saeed, has held a number of prominent posts and was instrumental in developing its outreach and propaganda initiatives.
Hamza is listed as a sanctioned terrorist by the US Department of Treasury. According to the department in 2012, he was a member of LeT’s core advisory committee and oversaw Saeed’s management of the group’s external ties.
By 2010, he was also working for philanthropic organizations connected to LeT and held a prominent role in a LeT university trust that Saeed was in charge of. Hamza, a fiery speaker and prolific writer, wrote several books, notably Qafila Da’wat aur Shahadat (Caravan of Proselytising and Martyrdom), which was published in 2022. He also edited the group’s monthly newspaper and contributed articles. In addition, he oversaw outreach and mobilization initiatives as the head of LeT’s “special campaigns” division.
Three senior LeT officials, including Hamza, negotiated the release of the organization’s arrested members in the middle of 2010. But in 2018, as LeT’s financial fronts, including Jamaat-ud-Dawah and the Falah-e-Insaniat Foundation, were targeted globally, he broke with the parent organization.
After that, he founded a splinter group called Jaish-e-Manqafa, which is said to have carried out sporadic fundraising and propaganda activities, with a special emphasis on Kashmir. Despite this break, the US Treasury still considers Hamza to be a major player in LeT’s ongoing recruitment, radicalization, and fundraising activities and continues to classify him as a global terrorist.
