Hangu blast: Compensation released for victims’ family after protest

Six children died on Friday when a football they were playing with exploded.

HANGU:

The family of six siblings, who were killed in a hand grenade explosion outside their house on Friday afternoon, were compensated by local authorities following a protest by residents and elders of Baber Mela, Hangu on Monday.

After funeral prayers of the deceased children were offered, hundreds of protesters gathered and blocked Hangu-Kohat Road at around 10am. The children were of Haji Gul, an internally displaced person from Orakzai.

Addressing protesters, Maulana Abdul Sattar, an elder of Baber Mela, said no representative of the government visited the bereaved family to grieve for their loss. Sattar added the family had been living as IDPs in Hangu, and no official bothered to visit and pray for the departed souls or console the family.



He urged the government to announce compensation for the family of the deceased and threatened to continue protests unless the demand was met.

After several hours, with vehicles left stranded on the Kohat-Hangu stretch blocked by protesters, DC Hangu Saeed Ahmad Jan visited the family and announced Rs3.8 million as financial compensation. Following the announcement, protesters dispersed peacefully.

Initial investigation of Friday’s event, filed by the police after collecting evidence from the site, revealed that unidentified militants had planted a hand grenade that contained four times the amount of explosives in a usual grenade. They then placed it inside a small football before leaving it in a garbage dump.

An official of the city police revealed the children assumed the object to be a normal football and started playing with it, when it suddenly exploded, killing them all instantly.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 28^th, 2014.