38 civilians killed in attack on passenger vans in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
At least 38 people were killed and 29 were injured after gunmen opened fire on passenger vehicles in a tribal area in northwestern Pakistan, Reuters reported.
Chief Secretary for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, confirmed the attack, saying that the gunmen targeted passenger vans travelling from Parachinar in Kurram in a convoy. Among the fatalities in the attack were a woman and a child, Chaudhry said, adding that the toll is likely to rise.
“There were two convoys of passenger vehicles, one carrying passengers from Peshawar to Parachinar and another from Parachinar to Peshawar, when armed men opened fire on them,” a local resident of Parachinar, Ziarat Hussain, told Reuters by telephone.
The local added that his relatives were travelling from Peshawar in the convoy. No group has claimed responsibility for the incident yet. Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the attack on passenger vehicles. “Attacking innocent passengers is a cowardly and inhumane act,” he wrote in a post on X.
Pakistan Peoples Party’s chairperson Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari also condemned the attack, saying that those involved in the incident must be brought to justice. “Establishing law and order is a primary responsibility of the government, civilian lives should be protected,” he was quoted as saying in a post on X by his party’s media cell.
Tensions have existed for decades between armed Shia and Sunni Muslims over a land dispute in the tribal area that borders Afghanistan, according to Reuters. In August, 23 people were killed after they were forced out of their vehicles and shot by gunmen in southwest Pakistan.
The militants had stopped several buses, trucks and vans and shot people after checking their ethnicity in the district of Musakhail in Balochistan province. The separatists in Balochistan have often killed workers and others from the country’s eastern Punjab region as part of a campaign to force them to leave the province.