No fewer than 82 people have died and 156 more wounded in three days of bitter sectarian gunfights in northwestern Pakistan, a local official said Sunday.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country but Kurram district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province — near the border with Afghanistan — has a large Shiite population and the communities have clashed for decades.
The latest bout of violence began on Thursday when two separate convoys of Shiite Muslims travelling under police escort were ambushed, killing at least 43 and sparking two days of gun battles.
“The clashes and convoy attacks on November 21, 22, and 23 have resulted in 82 fatalities and 156 injuries,” said a local administration official speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Among the deceased, 16 were Sunni, while 66 belonged to the Shia community,” he told AFP.
Around 300 families fled on Saturday as the gunfights with both light and heavy weapons continued into the night, however, no fresh casualties were reported on Sunday morning.
“The mobile network across Kurram remains suspended and traffic on the main highway is halted,” said the local administration official.
Police have regularly struggled to prevent violence in Kurram, which was part of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas until it was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018.
A provincial government delegation held talks with the Shiite community on Saturday and is scheduled to meet with the Sunni community later on Sunday.
A security official in the provincial capital of Peshawar told AFP that the negotiators’ helicopter had come under fire as it arrived in the region, although no one was harmed.
“Our priority today is to broker a ceasefire between both sides. Once that is achieved, we can begin addressing the underlying issues,” provincial Law Minister Aftab Afridi said Sunday.
Last month, at least 16 people, including three women and two children, were killed in a sectarian clash in Kurram.
Previous clashes in July and September killed dozens of people and ended only after a jirga, or tribal council called a ceasefire.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 79 people died between July and October in sectarian clashes.
Several hundred people demonstrated against the violence on Friday in Pakistan’s second-largest city of Lahore and Karachi, the country’s commercial hub.
AFP