At least five people, three of them women, were killed and eight others injured when several hundred militants crossed the border into Bajaur Agency from Afghanistan and attacked local tribesmen in the early hours of Thursday.
While fleeing back to Afghanistan, the militants also abducted 20 to 25 volunteers of a peace lashkar in the village of Manaro Zangal. Security forces and lashkar members took retaliatory action against the militants but no casualties have been reported so far in the clashes. Officials and tribesmen in Khar, headquarters of Bajaur Agency, said a large number of militants had crossed into the Mamoond area of the agency equipped with modern and sophisticated weaponry and dressed in Afghan armed forces uniform.
The militants assaulted dwellers of the Manaro Zangal village, and opened fire when some of the tribesmen attempted to resist, killing five people and injuring eight others. Later, security forces and peace lashkar members retaliated and clashes continued in the mountainous border regions. Afghan officials denied any cross-border attack, however, and accused Pakistani troops of killing six people in a rocket strike on Wednesday instead, AFP reported.
M Ilyas Khan, a government official in Mamoond, and security officials in the northwest confirmed the attack and casualties. “About 300 militants came from Afghanistan and attacked villagers,” Khan said. “Tribesmen from the local lashkar have joined paramilitary forces and army artillery is pounding shells,” he added. The militants fled and the firing stopped around 1pm, local govt and security officials said. Bajaur borders the Afghan province of Kunar, where police chief M Ewaz Nazir claimed Pakistani troops had been shelling the Shigal district of the province for a month.
“Four children and two men were killed in one of their rocket attacks on the Chugam area of Shigal district yesterday,” he said. “There hasn’t been any attack from Afghan soil on Pakistani territory today or yesterday,” he added. “We cannot say why Afghans are denying the attack, but we are certain that the militants came from across the border,” a Pakistani security official said, however.
