Daily Times

PESHAWAR: At least 15 people, including five woman and four children, were killed and nine others sustained injuries when a passenger van hit a landmine in Godar area of Kurram Agency on Monday.

Sources said that the passenger van was en route to Sadda from Godar when it hit a landmine in Pato Kot village.

Eight people aboard died on the spot, sources said, adding that injured also included four Khasadar census workers who were scheduled to carry out the activity in the far-flung areas of the agency.

Irfan Ali, a local administration official in the area, also told AFP that the blast tore through the heavily loaded pickup truck early in the morning.

Kurram Agency Political Agent Shahid Ali Khan confirmed the incident and said that no group had claimed responsibility for the attack. He also told a foreign news agency that the militants had planted a roadside bomb in the Kurram Agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA).

“Among them is a baby and another nine-year-old child. Two women were also killed,” Dr Mujahid Khan, a senior health official in the district told AFP. According to security sources, two employees of the population census team were among the injured.

Soon after the incident, local people rushed to the site and shifted the injured to the Agency Headquarters Hospital, Parachinar. On the directives of Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Bajwa, the Pakistan Army dispatched a helicopter to shift the seriously injured persons to Combine Military Hospital (CMH) in Peshawar. “The army dispatched an MI-17 helicopter to Parachinar to assist in transferring the injured victims of the blast to CMH Peshawar,” a private news channel quoted the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) as saying. Sources said that nine of the critically injured persons had to be airlifted to Peshawar, where they were being treated for injuries until the filing of this report. The security forces later cordoned off the area and gathered evidence.

It is important to note that it was the second attack in the area during the past 25 days. On March 31, a powerful bomb exploded in the main bazaar, which also claimed lives of 15 persons and left dozen others injured. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s office said the premier had “directed relevant authorities to extend maximum support for treatment of the injured”.

Census workers have been the target of many attacks since the national enumeration exercise kicked off on March 15. After an attack targeting census workers in Lahore claimed the lives of seven people — four army soldiers, an employee of the air force and two other passers-by — and injured 18 others, COAS Bajwa declared that the sixth population and housing census would be completed at all costs.

The latest attack on Monday saw a security official laying down his life, while another suffered injuries in the line of duty, in Kallag Kolanch, an area near the coastal town of Pasni in Gwadar district. The two personnel were deputed to provide security to a census team.

Parachinar, the district capital, was the location of the first major militant attack in Pakistan in 2017, a marketplace bomb, which killed 24 people in January and was claimed by the Taliban. The same group claimed a car bomb attack in the district in March that killed at least 22 people.

The area also continues to suffer from a high casualty rate linked to landmines placed by Soviet forces in Pakistani border towns during their war in Afghanistan that began in 1979 and ended ten years later.

The Soviets planted the bombs as a means of intimidating local populations to prevent them joining an anti-communist uprising across the border.