PESHAWAR: Warring tribes in Pakistan’s northwestern Kurram district have agreed to a ceasefire and ended hostilities, officials said on Sunday, following five days of armed clashes in the district that left 30 people dead and 158 wounded over a property dispute.
Located along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province, the Kurram tribal district has witnessed deadly conflicts among tribes and religious groups as well as sectarian clashes and militant attacks.
A major conflict that began in 2007 continued for years before it was ended with the help of a jirga, a traditional assembly of tribal elders, in 2011. The latest clashes over a property broke out five days ago and quickly spread to several villages and nearby settlements.
“Officials with the help of tribal elders have brokered a truce between the two tribes today,” Nisar Ahmad Khan, the district police officer (DPO), told Arab News. “Police are now busy vacating bunkers and trenches from the warring tribes and taking control of those bunkers.”
The clashes erupted over the ownership of a property between two families that engulfed the entire volatile district, according to officials and local politicians.
Dr. Mir Hassan Jan, medical superintendent at the District Headquarters Hospital in Parachinar, the main town in Kurram district, told Arab News on Sunday that medical facilities in the district had so far received 30 bodies.
“We have a total number of 30 dead and another 158 wounded that had been brought or are being treated at the district’s hospitals,” he added.
Most of the villages in the area faced a shortage of food and lifesaving medicines amid clashes and closure of roads by authorities to contain the unrest as the warring sides pounded each other with small and heavy and small weapons.
Sajid Hussain Turi, a politician from the area who served as federal minister for overseas Pakistanis in Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s previous administration, said the main focus of civil and security officials was to help reach a ceasefire, which materialized today thorough the support of tribal elders.
“Our priority was to broker a ceasefire first,” Turi said. “[In] the second phase, the jirga will settle the land dispute.”
Warring tribes agree to ceasefire in Pakistan’s Kurram after clashes leave 30 dead
https://arab.news/c4x3s
Warring tribes agree to ceasefire in Pakistan’s Kurram after clashes leave 30 dead
- The clashes erupted over the ownership of a property between two families that engulfed the volatile district that border Afghanistan
- Most of the villages in the area faced a shortage of food, lifesaving medicines amid closure of roads by authorities to contain unrest
No casualties as blast derails Jaffar Express train in Pakistan’s south
- Passengers were stranded and railway staffers were clearing the track after blast, official says
- In March 2025, separatist militants hijacked the same train with hundreds of passengers aboard
QUETTA: A blast hit Jaffar Express and derailed four carriages of the passenger train in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province on Monday, officials said, with no casualties reported.
The blast occurred at the Abad railway station when the Peshawar-bound train was on its way to Sindh’s Sukkur city from Quetta, according to Pakistan Railways’ Quetta Division controller Muhammad Kashif.
No group immediately claimed responsibility for the bomb attack, but passenger trains have often been targeted by Baloch separatist outfits in the restive Balochistan province that borders Sindh.
“Four bogies of the train were derailed due to the intensity of the explosion,” Kashif told Arab News. “No casualty was reported in the latest attack on passenger train.”
Another railway employee, who was aboard the train and requested anonymity, said the train was heading toward Sukkur from Jacobabad when they heard the powerful explosion, which derailed power van among four bogies.
“A small piece of the railway track has been destroyed,” he said, adding that passengers were now standing outside the train and railway staffers were busy clearing the track.
In March last year, fighters belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) separatist group had stormed Jaffar Express with hundreds of passengers on board and took them hostage. The military had rescued them after an hours-long operation that left 33 militants, 23 soldiers, three railway staff and five passengers dead.
The passenger train, which runs between Balochistan’s provincial capital of Quetta and Peshawar in the country’s northwest, had been targeted in at least four bomb attacks last year since the March hijacking, according to an Arab News tally.
Pakistan Railways says it has beefed up security arrangements for passenger trains in the province and increased the number of paramilitary troops on Jaffar Express since the hijacking in March, but militants have continued to target them in the restive region.
Balochistan, Pakistan’s southwestern province that borders Iran and Afghanistan, is the site of a decades-long insurgency waged by Baloch separatist groups who often attack security forces and foreigners, and kidnap government officials.
The separatists accuse the central government of stealing the region’s resources to fund development elsewhere in the country. The Pakistani government denies the allegations and says it is working for the uplift of local communities in Balochistan.
