13 killed in Kurram attack on minibus
Daily Times
March 26, 2011
HANGU: Thirteen passengers were killed and eight wounded when unidentified gunmen, who also abducted 16 others, opened fire at two Parachinar-bound passenger coaches in Bagan area of Lower Kurram Agency on Friday. In a similar incident, five government officials, including an irrigation contractor, were kidnapped from Maidani Dam area of the agency.
According to sources, some armed men attacked two passenger coaches coming from Peshawar with heavy shelling in Bagan area, killing 13 and wounding eight people on-board.
Leaving the injured, the attackers drove away 16 passengers in the coach they were travelling in to an unidentified location, said the sources, adding that the other vehicle had caught fire due to the firing. The injured were ferried to hospitals in Ali Zai and Sadda areas.
According to a security official, the victims were all Shias.
Local sources claimed that as many as 45 passengers travelling in three passenger coaches were whisked away on Friday. Government sources, however, did not confirm this information.
Shias were heading in a three-vehicle caravan when the attackers, who came in two vehicles, opened fire and fled, leaving a number of people dead and injured, a local administration official, Fazal Hussain, told a foreign news agency. He said that a woman and a child were among the killed.
Khalid Umarzai, another senior administrative official, confirmed the incident and said the attackers also kidnapped over 20 Shias travelling in three coaches before fleeing.
The coaches were mostly carrying people from the Toori tribe, one of the main Shia tribes said Javid Khan, a local administration official.
The vehicles were attacked as they were traveling on the main road that runs through Kurram that connects the main town in the region, Parachinar, with Peshawar, said Khan.
Sectarian violence had kept the road closed until the peace deal was struck in February.
Entrenched terrorists oppose jobs and education for women in the deeply conservative tribal region of Kurram, which has for five years been a flashpoint for violence between Shia and Sunni communities.
More than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence between the groups since the late 1980s. Tribesmen in Kurram have reported that the Haqqani network a fiercely independent branch of the Afghan Taliban and a major enemy of the US and NATO forces had helped cut the deal with the Shias so it could use Kurram as a staging ground for fighting in Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, in a similar incident, five government employees, including an irrigation contractor, were kidnapped from Maidani Dam area by unidentified abductors. staff report/agencies