LARKANA: A 35-year-old man was killed in an ambush leading the death toll in an old enmity between two rival communities to 27 in a Naudero village on Sunday.

Unknown assailants ambushed Shahzado Jaiho while he, along with a friend, Maqsood Raza Mangnejo, was returning home from a clinic after receiving medical treatment in Mubarak Jaiho village within the jurisdiction of the Naudero police station. Mangnejo was wounded in the attack and taken to the Naudero Hospital, where doctors referred him to the Trauma Centre of the Chandka Medical College Hospital in Larkana.

Sources in the area linked the attack to Dahani community’s old enmity with a family belonging to the Jaiho community over alleged abduction of a Jaiho woman, ostensibly for marriage long ago.

They said that soon after the murder of Shahzado, armed men from both sides fought a gun battle but the assailants managed to escape.

Shahzado’s uncle Munwar Ali confirmed to local reporters that the attackers belonged to the Dahani community.

Naudero police said that the hostility between the two communities had begun after a man, Amir Bakhsh Dahani had allegedly taken away a Jaiho woman allegedly for marriage and was killed in Karachi in the name of honour by some Jaiho community members.

A series of tit-for-tat attacks followed the murder which until recently had left 26 people from both sides dead and many others wounded.

Several attempts by the rival communities’ elders to settle their dispute have so far failed as Dahanis appeared not ready to return the woman to her family.

The spate of violent attacks has kept tense a vast area, stretched across the towns and villages near Madeji town of Shikrpur district and Naudero and Garhi Khuda Bakhsh Bhutto in Larkana district.

Schools in six to seven villages have also remained closed and a primary school building in Jamar Jaiho village was demolished.

Published in Dawn, November 3rd, 2025