LANDI KOTAL, July 22: The Khasadar Force on Thursday night thwarted an attempt by militants to blow up the shrine of renowned Pashto poet Amir Hamza Khan Shinwari, commonly known as Hamza Baba.

Mohammad Ikram, the caretaker of the shrine, told Dawn that some two dozen armed militants attacked the shrine around midnight with hand grenades, damaging the boundary wall of the shrine and a kiosk outside the building.

“They wanted to scale the boundary wall in order to plant explosive around the shrine but we resisted them till the security forces arrived on our call,” Mr Ikram said.

Though the gun battle with the attackers continued for almost 30 minutes, he said, the mausoleum and the library inside the shrine complex remained safe.

However, the militants managed to escape after hurling two hand grenades and planting some explosives along the boundary wall of the compound.

Assistant Political Agent Landi Kotal along with a contingent of Khasadar Force also visited the shrine soon after the attack and assessed the damage to the building.

The Complex was constructed with monetary assistance from the federal government in 2003, some nine year after the death of Hamza Baba.

Literary circles have expressed their deep anguish over the attack and demanded of the local political administration to enhance security at the shrine in order to secure it from any further attacks.

Girls’ school destroyed

In Bara, unidentified militants destroyed yet another government primary girls’ school in Pahlawan Kali of Akkakhel on the night between Thursday and Friday.

Attacks against government installations in different parts of Bara have intensified during the last couple of years with Akkakhel being the centre of attacks by the militants.

Also in Bara, officials said that they had recovered a bullet riddled body of a local resident at Nihar Chowk on Gandao Road on Friday morning.

They said that the deceased, Riaz Ahmad, was killed by unidentified gunmen on charges of spying, according to a paper found with the dead body.

Meanwhile, the Jandakhel tribal lashkar in Chora area of Jamrud tehsil claimed to have destroyed an important base of outlawed militant organisation Lashkar-i-Islam and taken over 12 of their posts on the nearby hilltops.

The lashkar head, Malik Mohammad Hussain, said that security checkpoints had been established at different points in Chora area in order to keep an eye on the movement of militants.