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| April 09, 2007 | Monday | Rabi-ul-Awwal 20, 1428 |
Kurram bloodshed blamed on Taliban
PESHAWAR, April 8: The Imamia Students Organisation has demanded that the federal government should provide security to people and take action against criminals involved in firing, killing and ransacking private property in Parachinar, the administrative headquarters of the Kurrum Agency, for the last three days.
Speaking at a news conference at the Peshawar Press Club on Sunday, ISO central spokesman Shafique Bangash, former ISO president Sajid Hussain, Imamia Organisation leader Syed Kameel Abbas and a tribal elder from Parachinar, Syed Askar, alleged that despite the presence of army troops in the town, miscreants were attacking houses and shops.
They said that Sunnis and Shias had been enjoying cordial relations and living in peace over decades but with the influx of Afghan refugees following the Soviet attack on Afghanistan, sectarianism strengthened its roots in Parachinar.
They said that remnants of the Afghan war, known as Taliban, were the main trouble makers, who were part of international terrorism.
They alleged that these paid-criminals were carrying out the sinister agenda of the imperialism and inflicting losses on Ummah.
They said that there was no Shia-Sunni conflict in the area before 1985, and alleged that it was Gen Zia’s regime which sowed the seeds of hatred by disseminating hate material and then manoeuvred sectarian clashes in the town.
They said activists of a banned organisation, who according to them were opposed to the Milad procession, had used the event to advance their own agenda. They held Islamabad and activists of the defunct religious organisation (also Taliban) responsible of the ongoing lawlessness and anarchy in the town.
They said elders of Toori and Bangash tribes had tried to save the situation, but personnel of law-enforcement agencies, particularly Kurumm militia, had fanned sectarian riots by using force against people.
Miscreants had killed eight people when they opened fire on a Milad gathering in the town, they said, adding that gunship helicopters had targeted residential areas to harass people.
They alleged that lackeys of the United States were involved in the ongoing lawlessness and killings in the town.
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