KARACHI: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Wednesday expressed concern over ‘innocents’ being killed during Pakistani security forces’ airstrikes in North Waziristan on Sunday, DawnNews reported.

In a statement issued to the media, he said that his party was not in favour of a military offensive and vowed to oppose it in the future as well.

Earlier, Maulana Samiul Haq, who is also chief of his own faction of the religious Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-S) party had said that he would no longer act as a government-backed peace broker with the militants after airstrikes killed 40 in the tribal agency bordering Afghanistan.

“Killings of innocents and exodus of civilians after the airstrikes in North Waziristan is regrettable,” the statement quoted the JUI-F chief as saying.

“What criteria are adopted to ascertain who is a terrorist and who is not,” he inquired.

The air strikes in the North Waziristan and Khyber tribal regions on Tuesday were an apparent retaliation for two major Taliban attacks on military targets in as many days. But security officials said the strikes were carried out on the basis of intelligence reports.

Assailing the government for its failure to come up with a clear stance on the issue, Fazlur Rehman said that people of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) were being “sandwiched” from all directions.

The JUI-F chief said that his party would not accept the policy of targeting civilian population in the name operations against Taliban militants.

He clarified that his party was neither in favour of the operation nor will it endorse such an action in the future.