NEW DELHI: Slain terror commander Hamza Burhan was buried in Rawalpindi on Friday morning in the presence of several top terror chiefs including Hizbul chief Syed Salahuddin and Al Badr head Zameen Bakht besides ISI officials, visuals uploaded by locals on social media sites showed.The Pakistani police also announced the arrest of one of the shooters, a local from Nawababad in Rawalpindi who allegedly carried out a recce before the shooting. The shooter, sources said, was staying at a hotel near the Allama Iqbal Memorial School where Burhan worked as a principal as cover.Last year, ISI had provided Hamza with two armed bodyguards following inputs that he faced threats. The Pak police told the local media that Hamza had gone to meet two unknown visitors just outside his school, leaving the bodyguards behind. The shooters ambushed him when he was returning inside.Hamza, whose real name is Arjumand Gulzar Dar, was a designated terrorist and one of the key masterminds behind the devastating 2019 Pulwama terror attack. He was shot dead by unidentified gunmen in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) Thursday. The 27-year-old Al-Badr commander was ambushed and killed on the spot outside a college in Gojra, Muzaffarabad. He sustained three gunshots in the head and was killed on the spot. ISI desperately tried to revive Hamza by airlifting him to a military hospital but he could not be resuscitated.Sources said that Hamza was running multiple terror launchpads and was responsible for relaunching a fading Al Badr several years ago. It was in 2018 that Al-Badr had aggressively started recruiting Masood Azhar’s old cadres from Jaish-e-Mohammed by holding rallies in Dir and other areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.This followed the killing of its top commander Muzaffar Naikoo in 2017 and Zeenal-Ul-Islam being assigned the head of the outfit. Islam had defected from Lashkar-e-Taiba. He was, however, killed by security forces after a brief stint, which led to Burhan Hamza being appointed the commander of Al Badr in the Kashmir Valley.A native of Ratnipora village in Pulwama district of Kashmir, Hamza had called for a big revival of the outfit in a video message at the time. He subsequently fled to Pakistan where he was rehabilitated as the principal of a school in Muzaffaraabad. He was also married to a local woman with whom he had a son. His killing has now left a big void which the ISI is desperately seeking to fill.
