March 25, 2006	Saturday	Safar 24, 1427

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LANDI KOTAL, March 24: Three people were kidnapped from different areas while gunmen snatched cash from a trader in the Bara area, eyewitnesses said here on Thursday.

Names of the kidnapped people could not be ascertained as no one had lodged any report with local political authorities, officials said.

In the first incident, unidentified gunmen kidnapped a man from the main bazaar in Bara while another man was abducted from the Market Chowk near the Bara bazaar.

Sources said that a third man was kidnapped in the Alam Godar area by a group of gunmen. Eyewitnesses said that a trader, Tasleem Khan, was deprived of Rs100,000 at gunpoint by some gunmen in Bara, who fled the area after snatching cash from the trader.

Officials and witnesses said that after the abolition of a peace committee that was formed in Bara, cases of dacoity and kidnapping had increased to a great extent, as the anti-social elements faced no immediate threat from the committee.

ROCKET ATTACK: Two rockets and two mortar shells were fired at the mosque of Mufti Munir Shakir in the Nala Malakdinkhel area here Wednesday night, sources said on Thursday. No casualty or damage to property was reported.

Sources said that a similar attack was also made on the site on March 21.

FM STATION: An illegal FM radio station set up in Bara by Mufti Munir Shakir, a controversial cleric, is not only functional, but its duration of transmission has increased, sources said.

The station, they said, was working despite repeated warnings by the administration to the Mufti’s followers to close down the transmission facility.

Sources said that the Mufti’s followers were now threatening the followers of another controversial cleric, Pir Saifur Rehman, asking them to denounce the Pir or face consequences.

The Mufti had formed an organisation called Lashkar-i-Islam to intimidate the Pir’s supporters into shuning their allegiance to the pir. A leader of the organization, Mangal Bagh, was said to have threatened the pir’s supporters to denounce support to the pir.

Meanwhile, the political administration sent a jirga to the pir’s supporters to hand over the property of the pir to the jirga people. The tribal jirga had decided in one of its meetings held to defuse the tension between the two groups that in the event of the expulsion of Pir Saifur Rehman from the agency, his property would be handed over to the jirga. According to the jirga’s decisions, the Pir’s network in the Bara area had been disbanded. Keeping with the jirga’s provision, two of the grandsons of Pir Saifur Rehman left Bara on Thursday evening.