At least seven employees of a rural school in Pakistan were killed on Thursday in an attack with sectarian overtones. Two gunmen entered a classroom in the village of Teri Mangal while an exam was taking place and executed five teachers and two junior employees. All of them were members of the indigenous Shiite tribe. The affected town is practically glued to the Afghan border.
Parachinar, population 650,000, is an overwhelmingly Shiite district surrounded by a sea of ​​Sunni extremists, in a country more than 80% Sunni. With these ingredients, Parachinar has been the scene of a very bloody sectarian conflict for the last fifteen or twenty years. Its status as a bridge to Afghanistan made it a coveted city for the Taliban, who tried to expand from the only Sunni town, xxx, and from some villages, blocking and riddling the road communication between this enclave and the rest of the time. from Pakistan. The Taliban oil slick was all but wiped out early after the local tribe created its own militia and fought fierce battles against the Taliban, with the loss of hundreds of neighbors.
Although defeated on the battlefield, terrorist attacks continue to bloody Parachinar, whether at the hands of the Pakistani Taliban Movement – not linked to the Afghan Taliban – or the anti-Shia terrorist groups Lashkar e-Janhgvi and ssp.
The Pakistani authorities have camouflaged the sectarian character of the massacre as “a land dispute”. Even if so, the land disputes in Parachinar are themselves sectarian in origin. Some sources say that the murder of the Shiite teachers was preceded by the shooting and even the murder of a Sunni teacher. The only Pakistani minister in the area, speaks in a tweet of a personal revenge that ignites the sectarian conflict desired by third countries, but does not clarify that there was a previous murder.
“The two assailants have identified the Shiites and cornered them, before opening fire,” the Kurram district police chief, Muhammad Imran, told France Presse. The account of the Islamabad authorities and media is other.
This carnage was not the only one yesterday in the majority Pashtun province of Khaiber Pakhtunjua. Several soldiers were killed in an ambush by the Pakistani Taliban Movement. All this, the eve of the visit of the Chinese Foreign Minister to Kabul.
A Sunni Muslim who had been shot three hours earlier in his car on a road near the town died in hospital yesterday, according to Amir Nawaz, a local leader. According to other sources, he would also be a teacher or a Koranic teacher.
Sectarian tensions flared again last month, with four murders in the district. Kurram is part of the former Pashtun tribal areas that Pakistan did not fully incorporate into Khyber Pakhtunkhova province until five years ago.
The massacre occurred around the same time that a Pakistani foreign minister, Bilawal Bhutto, set foot in India for the first time in twelve years. Bhutto is a quietly minority Shiite, like his father, former President Asif Ali Zardari, his mother, assassinated former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and his grandfather, executed former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
