| Submit your comments on this article |
| India-Pakistan |
| Six kidnapped truckers found dead in Thal |
| 2010-03-28 |
| [Dawn] Police on Saturday found the bodies of six truck drivers who were kidnapped a few days ago in a restive northwestern town, officials said. The drivers were shot dead and their bodies were found in Thal district, local police official Abdul Rehman told AFP. "A letter found in the pocket of one dead truck driver said that if anyone supplied goods to the Parachinar Shia community, he will be treated like this," Rehman said. Parachinar, the main town of Kurram tribal district, is a sectarian flashpoint where activists from the rival Shia and Sunni Muslim sects have clashed in the past. A police spokesman confirmed the incident, but did not identify the suspects, saying an investigation was in progress. Shias account for about 20 per cent of Pakistan's Sunni-dominated population. The two communities usually coexist peacefully, but more than 4,000 people have died in outbreaks of sectarian violence since the late 1980s. Attacks by extremists, meanwhile, have killed more than 3,100 people since July 2007. Most attacks are blamed on the Pakistani Taliban. Separately, militants early Saturday blew up a boys' middle school in Alingarh village of Mohmand tribal district, where troops are hunting Taliban militants, local administration chief Amjad Ali Khan said. "The school was destroyed in the bombing, but there were no casualties," Khan told AFP. Taliban militants have destroyed 36 government school buildings in Mohmand since 2009. |
| Posted by:Fred |