March 18, 2007	Sunday	Safar 28, 1428

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LANDI KOTAL (Khyber Agency), March 17: Renewed fighting between rival religious groups in Tirah claimed another six lives on Friday, taking the death toll to 11 in two days, sources said.

They said fresh fighting broke out in the Nakai area when activists of the Ansaar-ul-Islam launched an attack on Zeek, an important post of the Lashkar-i-Islam. The two sides used heavy weaponry. Six Lashkar men were killed in the clash.

An Ansaar-ul-Islam spokesman Javed Khan claimed to have captured the Zeek post. He said the bodies of Lashkar men were lying in the captured bunker.

Meanwhile, NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai expressed concern over the fresh spate of killing in Tirah and urged local elders to take immediate steps for brokering a ceasefire.

Talking to a jirga of Bara elders in the Governor House on Friday, Mr Aurakzai said the law and order situation was hampering the execution of development schemes in the area. He said the killing of innocent people in Tirah had also earned a bad name for Khyber Agency.

He urged the tribal elders to contact the warring groups and persuade them for a ceasefire. A member of the jirga and former MNA, Malik Waris Khan, left for Gogrina on Saturday to hold talks with Lashkar-i-Islam’s self-proclaimed chief Mangal Bagh.

Before his departure, he said they had got the consent of Ansaar leaders for a peaceful resolution of the conflict.