Sunni Muslim males collect to supply prayers through the funeral ceremony for victims who have been killed in a tribal conflict, at Kurram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on October 13, 2024.
| Photograph Credit score: AFP
No less than 16 individuals, together with three girls and two kids, have been killed in a contemporary sectarian conflict in Pakistan’s northwest, officers mentioned.
Sunni and Shiite Muslim tribes have been engaged in intermittent combating for a number of months within the Kurram district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Kurram, previously a semi-autonomous space, has a historical past of bloody confrontations between tribes belonging to the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam which have claimed a whole lot of lives over time.
A convoy of Sunnis was travelling below the safety of paramilitary troopers on Saturday (October 12, 2024) once they got here below assault, a senior Kurram administration official informed AFP on the situation of anonymity.
“Consequently, 14 individuals, together with 3 girls and a couple of kids, have been killed, and 6 others have been wounded,” he mentioned.
Frontier police responded and killed two of the attackers, who have been recognized as Shiites, he mentioned.
The official mentioned the newest assault had “sectarian motives” that “have plagued the area for the previous 20 years”.
“Each battle tends to tackle a sectarian dimension,” he mentioned.
Different current clashes in July and September killed dozens of individuals and ended solely after a jirga, or tribal council, referred to as a ceasefire.
Officers try to dealer a contemporary truce. Tribal and household feuds are frequent in Pakistan.
Nevertheless, they are often notably protracted and violent in distant areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the place communities abide by conventional tribal honour codes.
The Shiite neighborhood in Pakistan, a predominantly Sunni Muslim nation, has lengthy suffered discrimination and violence.
Printed – October 13, 2024 05:37 pm IST
