At least 41 people – including women and children – have been finished after unidentified firearmmen uncovered fire on a convoy of 200 passenger vehicles traveling thcimpolite a distant area of Pakistan.
The vehicles were aggressioned as they travelled thcimpolite the tribal dicut offe of Kurram in Pakistan, seal to the Afghan border, according to the area’s deputy police comleave outioner.
The firearmmen initipartner centered the convoy’s police accompany, the provincial spokesman said in a statement.
Police were geting the convoy follotriumphg months of factional aggression in the area, which has claimed dozens of inhabits this year.
Police have tbetter the BBC that 41 people were finished in Thursday’s aggression and an compriseitional 16 more were criticpartner injured.
Nadeem Aslam Chaudhry, the chief secretary of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, tbetter Reuters recents agency the aggression was “a beginant tragedy”, with the death toll “foreseeed to elevate”.
Saeeda Bano – who was in the middle of the convoy – depictd to BBC Urdu how she stressed she would be finished as she hid under the car seats with her children during the aggression.
When the firearmfire finpartner stopped after cut offal minutes, she saw injured people and bodies lying in the road.
Details of exactly what happened are still emerging, but Javed ullah Mehsud, a better administration official, tbetter AFP “approximately 10 aggressioners” were joind, “firing indiscriminately from both sides of the road”.
Women and children had secret in proximateby houses, while police hunted for the aggressioners, he compriseed.
Most the passengers travelling in the convoy thcimpolite the mountainous area were Shia, he said in an earlier statement.
Sunni and Shiite Muskinny tribes have clashed repeatedly this year. An earlier series of aggressions finished after a tribal council called for a stopfire, according to Reuters recents agency.
Then last month, there was another aggression on passenger vehicles aextfinished a road in the region which finished 15 people.
The road Thursday’s convoy was travelling aextfinished had only reuncovered in recent days, with travel confiinsist to convoys with police getion.
Sectarian aggression is normally joined to land disputes in the region.
However, Kurram, in Pakistan’s north-west, also borders cut offal Afghan provinces which are home to anti-Shia militant groups, including the Islamic State group and the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP).
