Khyber Agency: Militants attack FC, police in Akka Khel

Child, three others injured as mortar shell hits house in Bara.

PESHAWAR:

A Frontier Constabulary (FC) official was injured when militants attacked a joint patrol team of the FC and police near the border of Akka Khel, Khyber Agency on Thursday.

A Badhaber police official told The Express Tribune that the attack was repulsed after militants and security forces exchanged fire for about 25 minutes. The militants then retreated towards the Khyber Agency.

FC official Bakhati Khan was critically injured in the ambush and rushed to the hospital. “Khan has multiple bullets wounds, but his condition is out of danger now,” the official said, adding that the police did not incur any losses.

Mortar shell hits house
in Bara

A child was killed and three others were injured when a mortar shell, fired from an unknown location, landed on a house in Sanzal Khel area of Bara tehsil in Khyber Agency.

Javaid, an official of the political administration, said that a man identified as Muhammad Amin was working outside his house when the shell landed on a room where his children were sleeping. His daughter was killed while two other children and his wife were injured.

“Residents pulled out the children who were trapped under the debris of their house and rushed them to Dogra Hospital,” he said. After being administered first aid, the children were sent to a hospital in Peshawar.

Incidents of mortar shells in the troubled area of Bara are becoming increasingly frequent and resulting in the loss of lives of civilians, including children.

Six militants killed

Six militants were killed and at least five hideouts were destroyed after gunship helicopters shelled the Kharmatang area of Bara tehsil on Thursday.

Javaid said that gunships pounded militant trenches in Kharmatang, which shares a border with Frontier Region Kohat Darra Adam Khel.

The area was once a stronghold of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) Tariq group. But since their hideouts were targeted by gunships helicopter in May and August, they were forced to flee.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 26^th, 2012.