AT LEAST 7 TEACHERS KILLED IN PAKISTAN SCHOOL SHOOTING

Thu 04 May 2023:

In the unrest-ridden northwest of Pakistan, gunmen attacked a school, killing several teachers and shooting another one of them in a separate attack.

On Thursday, a group of gunmen attacked a government school where pupils were sitting exams in Kurram, a district in the northern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. The seven instructors who were killed belonged to Pakistan’s minority Shia population, which is routinely targeted by insurgents.

Upper Kurram District Police Officer Muhammad Imran told Dawn.com that the first shooting incident took place on a road near the Shalozan area and the second at Teri Mengal School — which a Dawn.com correspondent present in the area said was at a distance of around six kilometres from site of the first incident.

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He said one person died in the first incident and six in the shooting at the school.

Police have yet to issue an official statement on the matter.

State broadcaster Pakistan Television Corporation reported that Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the incidents and had sought a detailed report from relevant authorities on the attacks.

The circumstances have remained “mysterious”, as not many people were able to see what had transpired, how many attackers were involved, or what their motives were.

Rising terrorism

In recent months, Pakistan has been hit by a wave of terrorism, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, since the outlawed Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) ended its ceasefire with the government in November.

According to a report, January 2023 was the deadliest month since 2018, in which 134 people lost their lives — a 139 per cent spike — and 254 received injuries in at least 44 militant attacks across the country.

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Most recently, militants targeted security forces in three overnight attacks in the Lakki Marwat district, triggering shoot-outs in which three soldiers were martyred and seven militants were killed.

The bloodshed came days after the military declared a new offensive against militants amid a resurgence of attacks in recent months, including a Peshawar mosque bombing that killed over 100 people in February.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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