PESHAWAR, March  21: Elders of the Kokikhel tribe of the Khyber Agency have threatened to go on hunger strike unto death, if the government failed to hand over land of Regi Lalma to them by March 25.

“The land on which the government has started construction near Regi village was our property, but soon after the creation of Pakistan, it was rented to the Pakistan Air Force for training purpose,” they said while addressing a news conference here on Friday.

The land, they said, was in the use of the PAF till 1997. But   regrettably the government, instead of handing it over to its real owners, started construction work to build the Regi Model Town.

The Kokikhel tribe owned 8,000 acres of land in Regi area, for which, they said, they had knocked the door of the chief minister in January 2003.

They said the governments of Sindh and Punjab were allotting lands to landless farmers, whereas tribesmen in the NWFP were being deprived of lands owned by their forefathers since centuries.