At least 42 people have been killed in days of fighting with machine guns and mortar fire in a tribal land dispute in northwest Pakistan, authorities said on Monday.
Family disputes are common in Pakistan but can become particularly protracted and violent in the mountainous northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where communities adhere to traditional tribal codes of honor.
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.
“Due to government efforts, a ceasefire was achieved in the Kurram tribal district. But firing resumed late in the night,” said a senior official in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s interior ministry, who requested anonymity as he was not authorized to speak to the media.
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He said local police had put the death toll since Wednesday at 42, all men, and 183 injured, including women. On Sunday, the death toll had been 35, with more than 150 injured.
Tribal fighters are bound by a code of ethics that prohibits them from targeting women, children or families.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said the violence had restricted movement and caused “heavy civilian casualties”.
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“HRCP calls on the KP government to ensure that the brokered ceasefire is maintained. All disputes, whether over land or arising from sectarian hostilities, must be resolved peacefully through negotiations convened by the KP government and with all stakeholders represented,” it said in a statement.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, where Shiites frequently face discrimination and violence.
Kurram is part of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous region that was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018.
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The move brought the region into the legal and administrative mainstream, but police and security forces often struggle to enforce the rule of law.
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