MULTAN, Dec 23: Elders of the Marri tribe from Kohlu Agency claim that army has been besieging their area and not allowing them to take the injured and sick to hospitals At a news conference here on Friday, they said that some 100 people had so far been killed while as many had been seriously wounded in air strikes being carried out for the last over a week as a fallout of the President Gen Musharraf’s visit.
Some miscreants had reportedly fired RPGs that exploded near the site where the president was addressing a gathering of tribal notables in Kohlu on Dec 14 last. Next day some top officials of the Frontier Constabulary were also attacked and injured when they were examining the area where the RPGs had landed. Prominent among those who addressed the press conference were Mir Asghar Khan Marri, Colonel Qaddafi, Rozi Khan, Wadera Usman Jan Marri, Mir Naseebullah, Lal Hussain Marri, Akbar Khan, Mitha Khan, Adam Khan and Surat Khan Marri.
The tribal notables said that the army was using jet aircraft and gunship helicopters to bomb their area. They said that the army had not been allowing the people to come in or out of the areas of Talli, Hasporr, Fazilchail, Jandran and Kahan. “Consequently, there is an acute shortage of food items in these areas,” they added.
They said the president and the prime minister had escaped narrowly the attempts on their lives made in Punjab and Sindh but the authorities did not carried out military operations there. “Then why the people of Balochistan are being punished for an incident which was quite a minor as compared to those occurring in Rawalpindi, Fateh Jang and Karachi?” they questioned.
They said in fact the preparation for the military operation in Kohlu had been under way for the last six or seven months and “Gen Musharraf’s visit was the climax of theses efforts.” They said that they wanted to draw attention of the United Nations and human right organizations towards the ongoing ‘atrocities’ in Kohlu.
They said that if the army operation could have resolved the issues of political nature, America would have met success in Afghanistan and Iraq long before.
They urged the government to immediately wind up the army operation in Kohlu and instead come around to the table for dialogue. “We do want exploration of minerals from our land but at the same time we do not want to meet the fate of Sui people,” they remarked.
The Marri tribe elders said that the natural gas explored from Sui in Balochistan had reached every corner of the country except Balochistan where a majority of the people were still deprived of it.