A ceasefire was finally brokered between Sunni and Shia Muslims seven days after sectarian clashes began in Kurram Agency bordering Afghanistan, a senior security official said on Thursday. “A ceasefire was reached in Kurram Agency today as guns have fallen silent,” FATA security chief Arbab Arif told Daily Times, as residents of the area were still under curfew. The official death toll from the clashes is at 49, but unofficial sources put the toll as high as 100 since the fighting began on April 6 in Parachinar and spread to other parts of Kurram Agency. Arif said 114 people had been injured. The security chief said that a tribal jirga and the political administration and heavy army presence had helped broker the ceasefire. Army helicopters fired “warning shots” in areas where the government call for calm was ignored and army and Frontier Corps soldiers were deployed to bring law and order under control.
Meanwhile, the governor of NWFP said that the involvement of “foreign hands” in the sectarian violence could not be ruled out. “The residents of Kurram Agency have expressed apprehensions about involvement of certain elements from across the border,” Governor Ali Jan Orakzai told a tribal jirga on Thursday, according to a press statement. “We cannot rule it out ... since the clashes started all of a sudden and at an inappropriate time,” he said. The press release said both sides used heavy weapons which were brought to the area during the Afghan jihad in the 1980s.
Agencies add: Suspected Sunni tribesmen raided a Shia village, Chardiwar, on the outskirts of Parachinar, killing five people. A government official, who declined to be identified, said six villagers were wounded and several houses burnt. There was also fighting in nearby Jalime village. Residents said at least 40 houses were torched in the two villages, and women and children fled to the nearby town of Alizai.