PESHAWAR, March 17: Elders of Khalil and Mohmand tribes on Monday said they would not let followers of Lashkar-i-Islam chief Mangal Bagh to ply their vehicles on the Bara-Peshawar road and demanded action against the militant group.
The elders and elected representatives had been invited by SP (rural) Nasirul Mulk Bangash to the Badbher police station to discuss the tense situation created after the killing of 12 people by militants in the Shaikhan village on March 3.
They asked police officials to ensure protection of the people of areas close to the Khyber Agency’s Bara tehsil or allow them to buy heavy weapons for their own protection. They alleged that residents of the Shaikhan village had been killed due to negligence of police, saying contingents of police had been deployed in the area but they had not taken any action against militants.
They said they had opened the Bara-Peshawar road for general traffic but they would not let militants ply their vehicles on it. “The militants are our enemies because they have killed and injured our people, looted and burnt our houses, snatched jewellery from women and we cannot forget the atrocities,” they maintained.
The elders said they would approach the provincial police chief and the governor for deployment of police and Frontier Constabulary personnel in the area and taking action against militants.
The SP said police had limited resources, but they were trying to serve people. He said peace committees had been formed at the village level to cooperate with law-enforcement agencies against anti-social elements.
He said 17 checkposts had been established in the limits of Badbher and Matni police stations to check the movement of suspected people.
Meanwhile, an 18-year-old boy, Niamat, son of Munaf, of the Shaikhan village, who had got unconscious on March 3 when rockets fired by militants hit his village, died in hospital, a member of the Shaikhan Union Council, Nasir Khan, told Dawn.
He said the boy was sitting in a shop at the time of the attack and had fainted all of a sudden. He remained under treatment in a local hospital but did not recover.