16 killed in latest northwest Pakistan sectarian clash

Sunni Muslim men gather to offer prayers during the funeral ceremony for victims who were killed in a tribal clash, at Kurram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on October 13, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AFP

At least 16 people, including three women and two children, were killed in a fresh sectarian clash in Pakistan’s northwest, officials said.

Sunni and Shiite Muslim tribes have been engaged in intermittent fighting for several months in the Kurram district of Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

Kurram, formerly a semi-autonomous area, has a history of bloody confrontations between tribes belonging to the Sunni and Shiite sects of Islam that have claimed hundreds of lives over the years.

A convoy of Sunnis was travelling under the protection of paramilitary soldiers on Saturday (October 12, 2024) when they came under attack, a senior Kurram administration official told AFP on the condition of anonymity.

“As a result, 14 people, including 3 women and 2 children, were killed, and six others were wounded,” he said.

Frontier police responded and killed two of the attackers, who were identified as Shiites, he said.

The official said the latest attack had “sectarian motives” that “have plagued the region for the past two decades”.

“Every conflict tends to take on a sectarian dimension,” he said.

Other recent clashes in July and September killed dozens of people and ended only after a jirga, or tribal council, called a ceasefire.

Officials are attempting to broker a fresh truce. Tribal and family feuds are common in Pakistan.

However, they can be particularly protracted and violent in remote areas of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where communities abide by traditional tribal honour codes.

The Shiite community in Pakistan, a predominantly Sunni Muslim country, has long suffered discrimination and violence.