K-P CM overseeing Tirah crisis: adviser

Barrister Muhammad Ali Saif, adviser to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) chief minister, has said Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur is personally overseeing the Tirah incident and has summoned a jirga of tribal elders in Peshawar to hear their concerns.

"The CM is in constant contact with the relevant administration [to address the crisis]," Saif said in a statement on Monday. According to the adviser, the government is deeply saddened by the tragedy.

Five people died and 17 others sustained injuries on Sunday when protesters were fired upon during a protest outside a military installation at the Bagh Maidan area of Tirah Valley of the Khyber district against the killing of a girl . Both Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and CM Gandapur condemned the shooting.

"We have announced Rs10 million each in compensation for those killed and Rs2.5 million for each of the injured. The provincial government stands in solidarity with the affected families and will remain beside them during this time of grief and sorrow," he added.

He said the K-P government last week convened an All Parties Conference (APC) to prevent such incidents in the future. However, he lamented that opposition parties as well as K-P Governor Faisal Karim Kundi, boycotted the conference, displaying a non-serious behavior.

Meanwhile, PTI's K-P Organizational Committee, in an emergency meeting, strongly condemned ongoing "state violence" against peaceful citizens across the K-P, especially in the merged districts, which constituted the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) till early 2018.

The committee unanimously asserted that extended military deployment under Article 245 of the Constitution has created an unchecked environment of force and ineffective accountability, violating basic rights and disrupting local peace.

It made a strong demand to the federal government to revoke all notifications issued under Article 245 within 15 days and to formally announce the withdrawal of military forces from the merged districts.

All PTI members in the KP Assembly were instructed to immediately present a resolution based on this demand and to ensure its passage with support from other parties.

The committee further directed that the K-P advocate general (AG) be instructed to file an urgent petition in the Supreme Court to lift the stay order issued on December 22, 2023, which has suspended the Peshawar High Court's ruling limiting the scope of Article 245.