LANDI KOTAL: Four unidentified bodies were found and two non-combatants were killed when a mortar shell hit a house in Bara on Monday.

Sources said the bodies with bullet marks were found in Gul Khan Bagh locality of Akkakhel area late on Sunday night.

In Sipah area, two non-combatants were killed and two others injured when a mortar shell fell on the house of one Nawab Khan Ghaibi Khel early on Monday.

Meanwhile, hundreds of families continued to leave the troubled areas of Sipah, Malikdin Khel and Akkakhel. They were reaching Shiekhan and Batta Thal areas of Peshawar district after covering several miles on foot.

Some of these families were returned back by security forces from Dogra area with the assurance that they would not be harmed during the ongoing military operation in the region.

Some residents of Akkakhel told Dawn by phone that over a thousand families were confined to their homes for the past five days and they were facing acute shortage of food.

They appealed to security forces and the political administration to either relax curfew or make arrangements for their safe exit from the conflict zones.

Meanwhile, the Bara-based banned militant group, Lashkar-i-Islam (LI), threatened to kill all those activists of the group who had surrendered to the government.

Saifullah Saif, the newly appointed spokesperson for the group, told media personnel by phone that houses of those activists would be torched.

He said there were hundreds of LI ‘fidayeen’ ready to sacrifice their lives for their chief, Mangal Bagh.

Saif claimed that the government had lost its writ in Tirah and Bara and that the LI was fully capable of `defending its soil’.

It was the first time that the LI reacted to Operation ‘Khyber 1’ which was launched on Thursday.

Published in Dawn, October 21st , 2014