In a recent fight that claimed 124 lives, warring Sunnis and Shiites in northwest Pakistan disregarded repeated ceasefire orders, killing 13 more people, according to a local government official on Saturday.
Although Pakistan is a Sunni-majority nation, there has been decades of conflict between the Shiite and Sunni communities in the Kurram area of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which lies close to the Afghan border.
Last Thursday, two distinct convoys of Shiite Muslims travelling under police escort were ambushed, resulting in the deaths of over 40 people and sparking new bloodshed.
Since then, the area has been at a halt due to ten days of fighting with both light and heavy weapons. Major highways have been barricaded, and cell phone lines have been cut off as the dead toll has increased.
After 13 more persons were slain in the last two days, a Kurram local government official on Saturday raised the dead toll to 124.
He stated that more than 50 individuals had been injured in new fighting that started Saturday morning, and that two of them were Sunni and eleven Shiite.
“There is a severe lack of trust between the two sides, and neither tribe is willing to comply with government orders to cease hostilities,” he told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Police report that many people want to flee the area due to the violence, but the deteriorating security situation makes it impossible,” he added.
A seven-day ceasefire deal was announced by the provincial government last weekend but failed to hold. Another 10-day truce was brokered Wednesday but it also failed to stymie the fighting.
A senior security official in the provincial capital of Peshawar, also speaking anonymously, confirmed the total death toll of 124.
“There is a fear of more fatalities,” he said. “None of the provincial government’s initiated measures have been fully implemented to restore peace.”
Kurram, which was a part of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas until it was integrated with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018, has frequently seen police battle to manage violence.
According to the Pakistani Human Rights Commission, sectarian conflicts in the area claimed the lives of 79 people between July and October.
Land conflicts in the rough mountainous area typically reignite the feuding, which is also driven by underlying animosity amongst the populations who follow various Islamic sects.
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