Roadside blast kills 3 in Mohmand

SHABQADAR: A tribal police official and two civilians were killed in a roadside bomb attack in the Mohmand tribal region on Monday.

A car carrying Naseer Khan, Naib Subedar of the Levies force, a marble contractor Umar Khan and a third person, identified as Irshad Khan, was targeted with an improvised explosive device (IED) in the Baizai subdivision of Mohmand Agency, a local administration official told The Express Tribune.

The car was destroyed in the blast and all those inside were killed instantly, he added. It wasn’t immediately known who detonated the bomb and why. However, Taliban militants routinely target government and security officials in the agency.

In other violence, a patrol vehicle of the security forces hit a roadside bomb also in Baizai subdivision, leaving two army officials, including a lieutenant colonel, wounded. They were driven to hospital in Ghallanai, the headquarters of Mohmand Agency. Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Governor Sardar Mehtab, who happened to be there on an official tour, visited the injured in the hospital. He condemned the attack and also offered condolences to the families of the two civilians killed in the first blast. In a subsequent operation, security forces detained 16 suspects under the collective responsibility law of the Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR), the British colonial-era set of laws that still governs Pakistan’s tribal regions.

Peace has been restored in Baizai subdivision which shares border with Afghanistan’s eastern provinces after a successful military operation. The administration has disarmed the peace militia and deployed the Levies force instead.


Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2015.