News / Pakistan

Roadside blast kills anti-Taliban tribal elder in Pakistan

Tuesday, 03 November 2015 9:46 AM [ Last Update: Tuesday, 03 November 2015 11:29 AM ]

Pakistani volunteers search for blast victims in the wreckage of a destroyed passenger bus following a bomb explosion in Mastung district, south of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, September 18, 2012. (Photo by AFP)

An anti-Taliban tribal elder has been killed in a roadside blast that rocked a troubled district in Pakistan’s northwest near the border with Afghanistan.

Malik Mohammad Younis lost his life on Tuesday after his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in Gulloshah Village near Khar, the main town in Bajaur tribal district.

According to tribal administration official Saaz Mohammad, Younis’ two sons, who were accompanying the prominent elder of the Salarzai tribe, were wounded in the incident.

No group or individual has claimed responsibility for the attack, but Pakistani Taliban militants have been blamed for such raids in the past.

Confirming the attack and the death, intelligence officials said Younis supported the government’s offensive against Pakistani Taliban militants, and had been active in organizing tribes to fight them.

On October 4, another anti-Taliban tribal elder was killed in a similar explosion in the town of Baka Khel Wazir south of the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province.

Pakistani police officials inspect the site after a bomb explosion near the police headquarters in the eastern city of Lahore on February 17, 2015. (Photo by AFP)

Thousands of Pakistanis have lost their lives in bombings and other militant attacks since 2001, when Pakistan entered an alliance with the US in the so-called war on terror. Thousands more have been displaced by the wave of violence and militancy sweeping across the country.

Pakistan has been waging a major offensive against militant hideouts across the troubled northwestern tribal regions since June last year, when a deadly raid on the Karachi International Airport ended the government’s faltering peace talks with the militants.

Pakistan’s army intensified its military operations after Taliban elements killed over 150 people, most of them children, in an armed assault on a school in Peshawar in December 2014.

Pakistani officials say almost 3,000 militants have been killed since the launch of the operation.

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