Mortar shell attacks: In Bara, children pay the price of war
PESHAWAR:
Eijaz Ahmad believes mortar shells fall from the sky. He doesn’t hold security forces or militants responsible for the attacks and like most residents of Bara, is clueless about the source of the shells that have hit their residences.
Security officials, however, claim that it’s the militants who target the civilian population to create a negative image of the forces.
For the second time in three weeks, stray mortar shells claimed innocent lives in Bara. In Thursday’s incident, four people of a family, including two children, were killed, while two people were injured when a stray mortar shell hit a house in Akkakhel area of Bara subdivision.
A paramilitary official said Haji Said Kareem’s family was sleeping when shells fired from an unknown direction landed on their house, killing his daughter-in-law, two granddaughters and another female family member. Two other grandchildren suffered injuries.
He added that Kareem’s son was killed in an improvised explosive device blast in Bara a year ago.
Hundreds of people, including children, have died in similar attacks since 2009, while thousands of people have been rendered homeless.
On August 25, four mortar shells fell at a residential area in Qambarabad, Bara, killing nine people of one family, many of them children.
Dilawar Khan, who survived that attack, said that the ongoing military operation and enforced curfews had forced most of his family members to move to Peshawar, but his grandmother was reluctant to leave her ancestral home. Talking to The Express Tribune, Khan said that his family had gathered on that fateful day to celebrate Eid. “Everyone was happy that day,” Khan recalled, adding that all the victims were young people, either studying or working in Peshawar.
Another family member, Mohammad Younis told The Express Tribune that he and his cousins were playing football together after three years that day. “The first shell landed in the hujra where the elders were sitting, another hit the courtyard where the children were playing and two more shells hit the house. Every child that was playing there was killed,” he said.
“A single stray shell landing in a house can be called an accident, but not when four are fired at the same location,” he said.
They were not involved in any anti-state activities and did not have any enemies,” said Benyamin, an elder from the same village.
A security official told The Express Tribune that calls intercepted that night revealed that it was the Lashkar-e-Islam (LI) who had fired the mortar. “Younis, who also acts as a spokesperson for Mangal Bagh, the head of the LI, was responsible for the attack. His group killed innocent people in Bara,” he said. The militant commander later called a journalist and put the blame on the security forces, he added.
The entire area has been gripped with terror and many residents have abandoned their houses and are reluctant to go back. There has been curfew imposed in Bara for the past three years since the operation was launched on September 1, 2009. Since then, it has not been lifted.
People in the area have been trapped between a war fought by militants and security forces. Though majority of them have migrated, they come back to their homes whenever they see an improvement in the situation. However, their hopes about an improving situation are often misguided, and many have to pay a heavy price for this.
WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SHER KHAN IN BARA
Published in The Express Tribune, September 14th, 2012.
Mortar shell attacks: In Bara, children pay the price of war – The Express Tribune
