KOHAT, Oct 13: Work on the Gurguri oilfield in Banda Daud Shah tehsil of Karak district and the laying of a pipeline in Aman Kot was stopped on Tuesday following a warning by a grand jirga of 50 villages held under the auspices of the Khattak Grand Ittehad and Action Committee to attack and destroy the site if their demands were not met.

All the 250 staff members of the Descon Engineering and MOLE, a foreign drilling company, were pulled out of the area under the protection of frontier constabulary and police, reports reaching here on Tuesday night said.

A large number of FC personnel and police took control of the entire area to protect the site from the attackers. The project manager of Descon, Iqrar Pervez, told journalists that he had sent the whole staff on leave till further orders. The staff included the Kohat chief manager of MOLE company, Cgyula Vegh, 50 officers and 200 workers.

Mr Pervez said that in an attack on Sunday one of their drivers Shahnawaz was injured and property worth Rs5 million was damaged by hundreds of armed protesters.

The attack was led by local chief of Taliban Tehrik Nasrullah Jan. Mr Vegh was forced to hide in a container and later taken to a safe place via Hangu when some miscreants spread the news that the Taliban leader wanted to kill him.