ISLAMABAD: The armed clashes between rival tribes in Kurram tribal district continued for the sixth day on Sunday with armed groups targeting each other’s villages with small and heavy weapons, leaving more than 35 dead and over 150 injured.
Official and local sources told Business Recorder that the land dispute between two tribes — Malikhel and Mangal of Madaki Kali in Boshehra village — turned into deadly clashes which gradually spread over to the whole Kurram district.
Rival tribes in villages including Boshehra, Malikhel, Dandar, Pewar, Tari Mangal, Muqbal, Kunj Alizai, Nastikot, Para Chamkani, Karman, Khar Kalai, Sangina and Balishkhel were targeting each other villages with small and medium range weapons including rocket launchers, mortars and small range missiles.
Hospital sources in Parachinar said that the district headquarters hospital received 31 dead bodies and around 150 injured.
Kurram district: Nine killed over land dispute
The said some serious injured need to be transported to Peshawar and urged the government immediately make arrangements to transport them to Peshawar or other cities for critical medical treatment. They said that the casualties might be higher as they were unable to confirm the dead and injured that have received the hospitals in Sadda, as there is no official number available to confirm the overall death toll.
Since the single road linking Parachinar, the district headquarters, with rest of the country, is closed for almost week now, there is serious shortage of essential items, medicines, petroleum products and other commodities. Official sources said that the district headquarters hospital of Parachinar is flooded with injured while the only health facility is already short of life saving medicines.
Meanwhile, the local administration and the peace jirga have been failed to broker a peace deal as efforts were underway for the last four to five days to restore the peace. Due to dire security situations schools have been closed for an indefinite period.
Talking to this correspondent, people from different walk of life, urged the federal and provincial governments to immediately restore the peace and ensure protection of life and property of the locals.
AFP adds: A land feud between tribes in north-western area has spilled over into days of sectarian fighting with machine guns and mortars, killing 35 people so far, officials said Sunday.
The Sunni Madagi and Shia Mali Khel tribes have been fighting since Wednesday, when a gunman opened fire at a council negotiating a decades-long dispute over farmland, local police official Murtaza Hussain said.
While no one was wounded in that attack, Hussain said it reignited longstanding religious tensions between the clans who live side-by-side in the district of Kurram on the border with Afghanistan.
“Initially a land dispute, the issue has now escalated into sectarian violence,” Hussain told AFP, confirming the conflict “claimed 35 lives” so far.
“The government and local leaders are attempting to halt the fighting through jirgas (tribal councils), but have not yet succeeded,” he said.
A senior government official from Kurram district, who asked to remain anonymous, also gave a death toll of 35 but said 151 more people had been wounded.
“The conflict, now in its fifth day, has escalated into a Shia-Sunni dispute,” he said. “All attempts to resolve the conflict have failed.”
The government official said the Shia tribe had “suffered most” in the conflict, with 30 of those killed from the minority sect.
A police source, who asked not to be identified, said both sides were using automatic weapons and mortars in fighting focussed around the town of Parachinar, which had been blockaded by law enforcement.
“The area is still witnessing clashes involving the use of both small and large weapons,” the senior Kurram district official said.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024
Comments
Comments are closed.