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| India-Pakistan |
| 10 civilians, four FC men die in NWA clashes |
| 2009-08-06 |
| [The News (Pak) Top Stories] Fourteen people, 10 of them women and children and four paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers, were killed and several others sustained injuries in clashes between security forces and the militants in North Waziristan Agency on Monday night. The Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General, Maj-Gen Athar Abbas, confirmed the killing of four FC men in the fighting. He said terrorists attacked security posts in the night and the troops repulsed the attack by targeting their positions. However, he said the military had no details about the losses suffered by the militants. The latest fighting between security forces and the militants erupted when the latter launched a series of attacks on various posts of security forces in Miramshah on Monday night. The attacks were well-organised as the militants first attacked security posts and then started firing mortar shells at the FC camp and the Pakistan Army base in Miramshah. Tribal sources said the town echoed with heavy explosions. The attacks on Amin picket, Sarbanki and Banda posts on hilltops and on Miramshah prompted security forces to begin heavy artillery and mortar shelling from the FC camp towards the direction from where they were being fired at. The entire tribal region plunged into darkness as power supply was suspended due to the explosions. According to official sources, Miramshah turned into a battlefield as firing was heard everywhere in the town and its suburbs. Figures collected by The News from official and tribal sources showed that only civilians, mostly women and children, became the victims of indiscriminate firing. Madad Khan, a retired assistant director of Livestock Department, was the first victim of the fighting. His house in Chashma village near Miramshah was hit by several stray shells, causing heavy damage to the structure. Madad Khan remained safe but his 12-year-old son Hamid and his sister-in-law were killed on the spot while four family members, including his wife, two daughters and a niece, were seriously injured. The injured could not be taken to the nearby Agency Headquarters Hospital in Miramshah due to curfew. Villagers in Chashma village said their pleas to the FC men at the nearby post for taking the wounded to the hospital were turned down. According to sources, four soldiers deployed at the Amin picket were killed and two others seriously injured in an attack on the post. In another incident, seven people, four of them women and three children, were killed and a few others injured when several shells hit a house of a tribesman, Mir Shah Jehan, in Khadarkhel village in the militants-controlled Dattakhel town, 45 kilometres west of Miramshah. The injured were brought to the distant Miramshah hospital where doctors said an injured child was in critical condition. Tribal sources told The News by telephone that heavy firing started in the border town after an attack by the militants on the Dattakhel FC Fort. The troops stationed in the British-era fort repulsed the attack and fired at suspected positions of the militants. Naseebullah, the 15-year-old son of Izzat Khan, died when a stray mortar shell fell on his house in Machas Colony in Miramshah. His aggrieved father said the deceased was asking his younger brothers and sisters to be careful when the heavy firing started in the town. In Sarbanki village near Miramshah, two children of tribesman Fazlur Rahman were critically injured and his house damaged in mortar shelling. Also, an electric transformer caught fire when hit by a stray shell. |
| Posted by:Fred |