PESHAWAR: The president of a 45-member committee leading a large sit-in protest in Pakistan’s northwestern Bannu on Wednesday called for a judicial inquiry to probe a shooting incident that killed at least two people in the city last week. 

Thousands took part in a rally in Bannu last Friday to protest the government’s announcement to launch a new military operation against militants in the country. Participants of the rally demanded peace and an end to militancy in the country, which has killed thousands of people in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province and displaced hundreds of thousands. 

Tensions flared when at least two persons were killed and more than 20 injured after gunfire triggered a stampede at the rally, prompting thousands to stage a sit-in protest that continues to date.

Local residents and some Pakistani politicians accused security forces of shooting at the rally. Pakistan’s military spokesperson earlier this week rejected the allegations at a press conference, saying that “some negative elements” had joined the march and resorted to firing, pelting stones and chanting anti-state slogans.

“We demand a clear and transparent judicial inquiry through the Peshawar High Court into this incident,” Nasir Khan Bangash, president of the 45-member Bannu Aman Jirga and a senior member of the Bannu Chamber of Commerce, told Arab News. 

He rejected the military spokesperson’s allegations that the government’s efforts to launch a new military operation, “Azm-e-Istehkam” or Resolve for Stability, was being politicized. Bangash said the rally’s main was to demand peace. 

“The protest wasn’t political. Apart from white flags, there were no other flags [of other political parties] in the peace march,” Bangash said.

He said protesters wanted police to be empowered to deal with miscreants in the province, adding that they would not accept any military operations in KP. 

Arab News reached out to the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, for its reaction to Bangash’s statement but did not get a response till this report was filed. 

‘COMPREHENSIVE CAMPAIGN’

Past military operations have displaced hundreds of thousands of people and destroyed countless lives and livelihoods in Pakistan’s KP province, sparking a civil rights movement by ethnic Pashtuns.

The Pakistan army was able to effectively dismantle the Pakistani Taliban, or TTP, and kill most of its top leadership in a string of military operations from 2014 onwards in the country’s tribal areas, driving most of the fighters across the border into Afghanistan, where Islamabad says they have regrouped. Kabul denies this.

Islamabad says the new surge in violence is because Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers are not doing enough against militants using its soil to launch attacks on Pakistan. Kabul says rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue and it does not allow militants to operate on its soil.

Fears of more displacement have been raised after the government announced last month it would launch the Azm-e-Istehkam operation.

In his press conference this week, military spokesman Lt. Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry clarified that the campaign was not meant to be a full-scale military operation.

“This is a comprehensive campaign against terrorism, which won’t just root out terrorism but which will lift up all of society,” he said.