Pakistani officials said Saturday that sectarian clashes in a northwestern region bordering Afghanistan have resulted in the deaths of at least 14 people, including women.
Witnesses and local police said the clashes in Kurram, a turbulent district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, erupted Saturday morning after armed men sprayed passenger vehicles with bullets.
The victims belonged to a Shi’ite Muslim tribe; the assailants were from a rival Sunni Muslim tribe. The news of the shooting sparked skirmishes elsewhere in the area.
A Kurram police deputy commissioner said the violence injured eight people, describing the condition of some of them as “critical.”
“Shots were fired in the Kunj Alizai mountains close to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and on the surrounding roads,” Javidullah Mehsud said, sharing details about how the deadly fighting started.
District administration officials quickly deployed police and paramilitary forces to the conflict area to restore order and broker a truce between the warring sides with the assistance of tribal elders.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the violence on Saturday, urging provincial authorities to take urgent measures to resolve the unrest and restore peace to the border district.
“Despite the heavy presence of military and civilian armed forces, law and order has deteriorated to the point that Kurram’s residents live in a constant climate of fear,” the monitoring agency said.
Kurram has a history of sectarian conflict between its heavily armed Shi’ite and Sunni tribes.
Local authorities said that ongoing tensions are rooted in a land dispute between the tribes, resulting in upwards of 100 casualties on both sides in the past three months.
Pakistan has experienced a dramatic surge in violence this year, mostly blamed on Islamist militants active in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and separatist insurgents in the southwestern Balochistan province, both marking the country’s nearly 2,600-kilometer border with Afghanistan.
Officials and independent research reports have documented more than 1,000 fatalities of Pakistanis since the start of 2024 — half of them civilians and as many security forces.
Heavily armed assailants carried out a predawn attack on a coal mine in Balochistan’s Duki district on Friday, killing at least 21 miners and injuring several others.
Several ethnic Baloch groups are active in the impoverished province, which is rich in natural resources. They claim they are fighting for Balochistan’s independence from Pakistan and accuse the central government of exploiting the region’s resources at the expense of the local population.
Islamabad rejects the charges and says the insurgents’ violent campaign aims to disrupt economic development in the province.
