“What started as a land dispute has now escalated into sectarian violence,” said local police official Murtaza Hussain.
Two officials said 35 people have been killed so far in the clashes. [Stockbyte/Getty-file photo]
A tribal land dispute in northwest Pakistan has escalated into days of sectarian fighting, with machine gun and mortar fire killing 35 people, officials said on Sunday.
The Sunni Madagi and Shiite Mari Khel Muslim tribes have been fighting since gunmen opened fire on Wednesday on a council that was discussing a decades-old dispute over farmland, local police official Murtaza Hussain said.
No one was injured in the attack, but Hussain said it had reignited long-standing religious tensions between neighbouring clans in the Kurram region on the border with Afghanistan.
“What started as a land dispute has now escalated into sectarian violence,” Hussain said. AFPIt has confirmed that “35 people have been killed” in the conflict so far.
“The government and local leaders are trying to stop the fighting through jirgas. [tribal councils]But we have not been successful yet,” he said.
Family disputes are common in Pakistan.
But clashes can become protracted and violent, especially in the mountainous northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where communities adhere to traditional tribal codes of honor.
A senior government official in Kurram district, who asked not to be named, also said the death toll was 35, but that another 151 people were injured.
“The conflict, now in its fifth day, has escalated into a Shiite-Sunni conflict,” he said.
“All attempts to resolve the conflict have failed.”
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, where Shiites frequently face discrimination and violence.
Government officials have said Shiites have “suffered the most” from the fighting, with 30 members of the minority Shiite sect killed.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said both sides were using automatic rifles and mortars in the fighting, which mainly centred around the town of Parachinar, which had been sealed off by law enforcement agencies.
“Clashes continue to take place in the area with both small and large weapons being used,” a senior Kurram district official said.
Kurram is part of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous region that was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018.
The move brought the region into the legal and administrative mainstream, but police and security forces often struggle to enforce the rule of law.
