Batkhela land dispute leaves five dead

Bus also attacked in Kurram, two killed

PESHAWAR:

A dispute over a pathway in Batkhela led to a deadly exchange of gunfire, resulting in the deaths of five individuals and injuries to one. 
The bodies were handed over to their families after postmortems were conducted at the headquarters hospital. According to the Levies post in Batkhela, the incident occurred in Bahadurabad, where gunfire erupted between two clans. 
From the first clan, Iftikhar, son of Noor Hussain, Bilal, son of Rashid, and Manan, son of Fazal Subhan, were killed, while from the second side, Abdul Kabir Khan. son of Taza Khan. and Rashid, son of Akbar Khan, lost their lives. Muhammad Rahim Khan, son of Abdul Kabir Khan, from the second party was severely injured.
Upon receiving information about the incident, a large contingent of Malakand Levies reached the scene and cordoned off the area, though no arrests have been made so far. With the assistance of local residents, Levies personnel transported the bodies, and the injured, to the headquarters hospital in Batkhela. The bodies were handed over to the families after postmortems and subsequently buried in their ancestral graveyards. 
According to the Levies post in Batkhela, neither party has filed any claim against the other at this time.
Kurram bus attack 
Two people were killed and a woman was injured when unidentified gunmen opened fire on a passenger coach in the Kurram tribal district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday. Police told The Express Tribune that the passenger coach was going to Parachinar from Peshawar.
The injured woman and the bodies of the slain passengers were shifted to the hospital. 
According to the police, the incident took place in Dad Kumar area of Lower Kurram. The deceased included the drivers of the vehicle, Mushtaq Ali and Wahab Ali, while the condition of the injured woman Sakina Bibi is said to be stable now.
Immediately after this attack, residents of Irfani village, near Alizai abducted four passengers of the rival clan and took them to an undisclosed location. The kidnapped individuals belong to different tribes of Upper Kurram.
Confirming the incident, the administration of Central Kurram said that soon after the unfortunate incident in Dad Kumar, the enraged people of Irfani Kala, a village of Alizai, held two people hostage, including Jahangir Khudran, resident of Karkhano Camp Sadda and Naseem Mengal from Karkhano Camp. 
They warned that the lives of the hostages are in danger, but police had been directed to take immediate action for their recovery. 
It may be recalled that on November 2, district administration of Kurram finally reopened the main Peshawar-Parachinar Highway.
All the entry roads were closed down by the security forces and district administration following the October 12 attack which left 15 people dead in the troubled tribal district.
The law-and-order situation in the district has been tense for the past several weeks, but authorities said that normalcy is slowly returning.
It should be noted here that during the road closure in and out of the area, the situation remained difficult for the general public. Apart from transportation, schools, colleges and markets were closed, while hospitals faced a shortage of medicines, due to which many patients lost their lives.
“Locals faced a severe shortage of food, medicines and many patients could not be transported to Peshawar in time. As a result, at least five people died awaiting treatment,” a local elder said at the time.
Kurram is one of the most troubled districts of the province due to sectarian tension and frequent land disputes. Land disputes between clans rapidly develop into sectarian clashes in the district without inviting any attention from the quarters concerned.