Pakistani soldier stoned to death for love affair

English: Map of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Reuters) - A Pakistani soldier was publicly stoned to death on the order of a tribal court in the country's northwestern Kurram region for having an affair with a local woman, government officials and tribesmen said on Wednesday.
Such tribal justice is a stark reminder of the difficulty in establishing a credible civilian administration in Pakistan's semi-autonomous region bordering Afghanistan, despite a series of military operations in the area and Western nations pouring in millions of dollars to help build infrastructure.

Punjab native Anwar Din, 27, was posted last year to the Parachinar area of Kurram agency where he met Intizar Bibi, 19, while manning a checkpost near her home.

The two embarked on a romantic relationship, tribal sources said, and he tried to elope with her when he was later posted to the disputed Kashmir region. It was not immediately clear what evidence there was, if any, of a romance.

"The girl left her home on Monday and met Anwar Din when villagers saw them," said Munir Hussain, the head of the local jirga, or tribal court, that sentenced Din to death. "We took the girl into custody and took the boy to the local graveyard where he was stoned to death and buried."

Din was killed on Monday, he added. A government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the jirga had ruled the woman must be shot to death. It was not immediately clear if this had already taken place.

The army was not immediately available for comment.

Kurram, the only part of Pakistan's largely lawless border region that has a significant Shi'ite population, is racked by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite tribes. Anti-Shi'ite ideology from the Taliban and al Qaeda has meant years of bloody fighting.

Bibi is Shi'ite while Din was Sunni, Hussain added.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas have never been fully integrated into Pakistan's administrative, economic or judicial system.

Instead, families and tribes often take justice into their own hands, presiding over "jirgas" or "panchayats", gatherings of elders that hand down punishments including rape, killing and the bartering of women to settle scores and restore honor.

In such tribal justice, women often fair far worse than men.

Hussain said that the jirga had also requested that another Pakistani soldier, Saif Ullah, be handed over for helping the couple meet and coordinate the planned elopement.

"The army is here for our security but if they engage in such activities we will not let them stay here," Hussain said. "This is an insult to tribal customs. We will revolt against this."

from REUTERS
By Saud Mehsud
DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Pakistan | Wed Mar 13, 2013 6:57am EDT
(Writing By Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Amie Ferris-Rotman and Nick Macfie)

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Suicide bomb kills 19 outside mosques in Pakistan northwest

Map showing the location of Hangu District (highlighted in red) within the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) of Pakistan. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

(Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed 22 people on Friday in a crowded market outside two mosques from separate Muslim sects in Pakistan's restive northwest, police and hospital officials said. Two of the dead were policemen.

Forty-eight people were wounded in the attack in a narrow lane in the town of Hangu that houses both a Shi'ite and a Sunni Muslim mosque.

Officials said the anti-Taliban Sunni Supreme Council often holds its meetings in the Sunni mosque, which made it a possible target.

But district police chief Muhammad Saeed said that the attack was aimed at Shi'ites and that Sunni Muslims were unintended victims.

"Most of the dead were moving in and out of the mosques in the marketplace after Friday prayers when the bomb went off," senior police officer Imtiaz Shah said.

Hangu, part of Pakistan's border region with Afghanistan, has been racked by sectarian violence between Sunni and Shi'ite tribes whose mosques, homes and shops are often close to one another.

Hangu is just a few km from Parachinar, which has a significant Shi'ite population against whom hardline Sunni militant groups have launched attacks for years.

No group had claimed responsibility for the attack by late evening.

from REUTERS
By Saud Mehsud and Faris Ali
HANGU, Pakistan | Fri Feb 1, 2013 1:58pm GMT
(Writing by Mehreen Zahra-Malik; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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Pakistani Taliban target female students with acid attack

Map of Pakistan (Photo credit: Omer Wazir)

Islamabad, Pakistan (CNN) -- It's the latest cruel tactic in the Pakistani Taliban's battle to stop girls and women from getting an education: acid thrown in their faces to scar them for life and deter others from following in their footsteps.

A doctor who treated the victims of an acid attack on a college van in the city of Parachinar in northern Pakistan last month told CNN that two girls had been left with severe burns to their faces.

The Pakistani Taliban have taken responsibility for the attack in threatening pamphlets distributed around the city. They also warn local girls against going to school, Dr. Shaban Ali said.

"We will never allow the girls of this area to go and get a Western education," said Qari Muhavia, the local Pakistani Taliban leader, when contacted by CNN by telephone.

"If and when we find any girl from Parachinar going to university for an education we will target her (in) the same way, so that she might not be able to unveil her face before others," Muhavia said.

The Pakistani Taiban's violent campaign to stop girls from getting an education was brought to international attention early last month when gunmen in the Swat Valley attacked another van, this time carrying schoolgirl education activist Malala Yousufzai. She is in a British hospital recovering from a gunshot to the head.

Shahab Uddin, a local government official from Kurram Agency in Pakistan's northern tribal belt, said the acid attack was the latest method used to terrorize young girls and deter them from going to school.

Fifteen students, boys and girls, from Kohat University were on their way home to Parachinar when unknown "extremists" stopped the vehicle and threw acid at the girls and shot one of the boys, according to Uddin.

Two girls, Zahida and Nabila, and one more boy had suffered burns, Uddin said, while Mohammad Ali, a fourth boy, was the student who was shot.

"After throwing acid on the students the assailants opened fire on the van," Uddin said.

He said the girls who were targeted "are alive and out of danger now, but their faces are badly scarred."

Ali, of the district headquarters hospital, confirmed that four students were brought into the emergency room for treatment, three with acid burns and one with a bullet wound.

"We are all graduate students studying in the master's program, and we were coming back home after taking our exams," one of the girls who was targeted told CNN under condition of anonymity.

"We don't know who the attackers were, but when our vehicle reached Doranai they stopped us and threw acid on our faces ... now we are scared of going back to our studies," said another girl, who also asked not to be named because she didn't have permission from her family to speak.

"Other passengers who were sitting in the vehicle were also wounded, but they were not as serious as Zahida and Nabila," she said.

Acid throwing is frequently used as a weapon in Pakistan to punish women for acts that allegedly bring dishonor to the family, or just to enact revenge.

Another recent acid attack in Pakistan resulted in the death of a 15-year-old girl, Anwasha. She was allegedly attacked by her parents for engaging in illicit relations with a boy, according to Tahir Ayub, a senior police official.

The 15-year-old girl suffered severe burns on her face and chest, but her parents initially refused to get her medical help, Ayub said. She was eventually taken to a hospital a day later and died from her injuries.

"Her father said she wasn't coming to her senses so the parents threw acid on her to save their honor," Ayub told CNN.

Anwasha's mother claimed she had seen the boy and girl secretly meet and had seen her frequently speaking on a cell phone, Ayub said.

The parents, who live in a suburban village outside the Kashmiri city of Muzaffarabad, are in police custody, Ayub said.

The Taliban in Afghanistan also have used acid attacks against girls to discourage them from going to school. The victims are left to cope with a disfigurement that is shameful in their culture and is likely to impact their ability to have a husband and family.


By Shaan Khan, CNN
November 3, 2012 -- Updated 1528 GMT (2328 HKT)
Journalist Amir Iqbal contributed to this report.

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Car bomb kills 10 in northwest Pakistan - officials

Map of Pakistan (Photo credit: Omer Wazir)

(Reuters) - A car bomb exploded at a market in northwest Pakistan on Monday, killing at least 10 people and wounding 45, officials said, adding that the death toll was likely to climb.

Many people had been walking along a narrow road beside the market in the town of Parachinar in the Kurram tribal area when the bomb exploded, the officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the blast. But the Pakistani Taliban, who are close to al Qaeda, have staged similar attacks in their bid to topple the U.S.-backed government.

Pakistan's military, one of the world's biggest, has failed to break the back of militant groups despite launching several offensives against their strongholds in the northwest.

"A large number of people were present in the market when the blast took place," said tribesman Dildar Hussain by telephone.

"Most of those killed and injured were the poor people selling vegetable and fresh fruits on their push-carts."

He said the explosives were planted in a vehicle loaded with grapes.

Suicide bombings have eased over the last year but it's not clear if that is due to pressure from the army or a shift in Taliban tactics.


from REUTERS
(Reporting by Jibran Ahmad; Writing by Michael Georgy, Editing by Nick Macfie)
PESHAWAR, Pakistan | Mon Sep 10, 2012 12:23pm BST

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2 killed, 20 injured in roadside bomb blast in northwest Pakistan

Two persons were killed and nearly 20 others injured when a bus was targeted with a roadside bomb in the restive Kurram tribal region of northwest Pakistan today, security officials said.

The incident occurred in Pir Qayyum area of the tribal district.

The bus was going from Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa capital Peshawar to Parachinar, the main town of Kurram Agency.

Two persons were killed instantly and 17 injured persons were taken to a hospital in Parachinar, security officials told TV news channels.

Hundreds of people have lost their lives in sectarian violence between rival Shia and Sunni tribesmen in Kurram Agency over the past four years.

No group claimed responsibility for today's attack.

from deccanherald
---

from DAWN:

SADDA: Two people were killed and 17 others wounded when a homemade bomb exploded next to a bus on the outskirts of the town of Sadda in the northwestern Kurram tribal region, near the Afghanistan border, local government officials said.

The Pakistani military has been conducting offensives against militant hideouts in Kurram, and dozens have been killed in intense fighting since the start of the year.

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15+ killed in suicide blast in NW Pakistan(updated)

Map of Pakistan (Photo credit: Omer Wazir)

UPDATE: At least 25 people were killed and over 50 others were injured in a suicide blast that hit a mosque in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of Kurram Agency which borders Afghanistan Friday afternoon, reported local media.


The attack took place at about 1:50 p.m. local time when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a mosque located near a market place in Parachinar, a main city in Kurram Agency, according to a report by local Urdu TV channel Express.
A large number of people were offering Friday prayers inside the mosque when the blast took place.
Express quoted district headquarter hospital sources as saying that 25 people have been confirmed dead and over 50 others were injured and many of the injured still remain in critical condition so the death toll could further rise. 

ISLAMABAD, Feb. 17 (Xinhua) -- At least 15 people were killed and over ten others were injured in a suicide blast that hit a market area in Pakistan's northwest tribal area of Kurram Agency which borders Afghanistan Friday afternoon, reported local media.

The attack took place at about 1:50 p.m. local time at a main market in Parachinar, a city in northwest Kurram Agency, which is located just about 15 kilometers away from the Afghan border, according to a report by local Urdu TV channel Samaa.

Many shops around the blast site were damaged, said the report, adding that all the injured people have been rushed to the district headquarter hospital.

Police have cordoned off the blast site and a search operation is kicked off in the surrounding area.

Details about the suicide bomber are not known.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.

Friday's suicide blast in Kurram Agency is the third of its kind that happened in Pakistan over the last two days.

On Thursday two suicide blasts were reported in northwest Pakistan. One is in Upper Dir in which three local pro-government militiamen were killed and seven others were injured.

The other is in Peshawar, the largest city in northwest Pakistan, in which a suicide bomber hit a patrolling police vehicle at the outskirts of the city, wounding five cops.

No group claimed responsibility for both attacks which happened at a time when the Afghan president embarked on a two-day state visit to Pakistan.

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