Aid flight lands in KP’s violence-hit Kurram district
Resident says there is food shortage in area and injured suffering due to roadblock
Aid flight landed in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Kurram district on Tuesday where thousands of people are stranded because of tribal clashes that have killed more than 200 people since July.
Residents have reported food and medicine shortages in parts of Kurram district, which borders Afghanistan, as the government struggles to end a reignited feud between the tribes from decades-old tensions over farmland.
After the first flight landed in Parachinar, Faisal Edhi, the director of private welfare organisation Edhi, said “two patients who require urgent surgery” would be transported back to the city of Peshawar and that “more flights would keep coming back” throughout the week.
Medicines would also be delivered, Edhi reported.
Various truces have been announced since the latest round of fighting began, as elders from the two sides negotiate a lasting agreement.
In the meantime, the government has shut down key roads in and out of the district in an attempt to quell the violence, after a security convoy escorting residents was attacked in November, leaving more than 40 dead.
“Due to the roadblock, the system is collapsing, there is food shortage … the injured are suffering,” Munawar Hussain, a resident stranded in Kurram, told AFP.
“The jirga that has been ongoing for days has yielded no results, causing frustration among the locals,” Shahid Kazmi, another resident told AFP, referring to the council of elders.
Mobile and internet services are also disrupted in the area.
At least 133 people have been killed and 177 wounded in sporadic clashes since November 21.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 79 people had been killed in the region between July and October.
Police have regularly struggled to control violence in Kurram, which was part of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas until it was merged with KP in 2018.
The feuding is generally rekindled by disputes over land in the rugged mountainous region.
