UPPER DIR: Gunmen killed four members of a family and injured two women during an attack on a house in Sonai Darra village bordering Afghanistan early on Saturday.

The local police said security forces and local volunteers chased attackers and killed two of them.

The village has come under attack from the Taliban militants hiding in Kunar province of Afghanistan several times over the last three years.

No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

Forces, volunteers chase attackers, kill two

Sources in the police said the Taliban didn’t appear to be involved in the attack as the family had a land dispute with another, whose members had left the village and taken shelter in Afghanistan.

They said the land dispute could be the cause of the attack.

The sources, however, didn’t rule out the possibility of the attack being carried out by militants.

When contacted, Shahikot SHO Gul Fazil confirmed deaths but didn’t say who was behind the attack.

He said the police had lodged an FIR against unidentified attackers and began investigation.

The army troops are deployed on the border to prevent cross border attacks.

Last Monday, a remote controlled bomb targeted an army vehicle on the road that leads to the border town.

In Batkhela, two suspected terrorists were killed when explosives they were carrying on a motorcycle went off in Sakhakot area of Malakand early on Saturday.

According to the personnel manning the Sakhakot levies post, two motorcyclists were carrying explosives to Mardan when the motorcycle exploded on the main road near a telephone exchange.

The two died in the blast.

Soon after the blast, the levies personnel cordoned off the area to collect evidence.

One of the dead men was later identified as Zohaib of Sakhakot, while pieces of the other’s body were sent to the laboratory for DNA test.

The sources said security forces and levies personnel raided the house of Zohaib and collected evidence from there. They said a number of suspects had also been detained for interrogation.

The Sakhakot levies force registered a case of the explosion and began investigation.

In Bajaur Agency, unidentified militants fried several rockets and mortars at three different border areas of Nawagai and Mamond tehsils on Saturday. No casualties were reported, however.

Officials of the political administration said militants fired several rockets and mortars from across the border targeting Matak and Redawnoo of Nawagai tehsil and Ghakhi, the border area of Mamond tehsil.

They said the attack missed targets as the rockets and mortars landed several meters away from residential areas.

After the attack, security forces and members of local peace committees in the area took positions and fired at attackers forcing them to flee.

In Charsadda, the building of a government high school in Sheikhabad area of Shabqadar tehsil was damaged when explosives planted there went off early on Saturday.

The police said two rooms were badly damaged in the blast, while the building developed cracks.

They said they also found a bomb weighing five kilogrammes in a room and defused it.

The police said they had begun a search operation in the area but arrested no one by night.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2014