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Month/Date
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Incidents
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February 9
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At least 31 people are killed
and 50 others wounded in a suspected suicide attack on a Muharram
procession of Shia Muslims in the Hangu town of North West Frontier
Province (NWFP). A series of explosions occurred through the procession
in the main bazaar of Hangu town, some 200 kilometers northwest
of Islamabad, between 9.30 am and 9.40 am local time. At least
23 people are killed and 50 injured in the three bomb explosions.
Four people died when gunmen fired on a minibus in Saidan Banda
near Hangu and four truck drivers are shot dead after a mob torched
their vehicles in the nearby Ibrahimzai area. In the ensuing riots,
angry worshippers set ablaze shops and vehicles prompting authorities
to impose curfew. NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani said a preliminary
investigation showed the attack is a suicide bombing.
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February 10
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The death toll in the suicide
attack on a Muharram procession at Hangu has increased to 40.
Troops were deployed in the town after angry Shias set ablaze
shops and cars following the attack. Officials said that at least
90 people are wounded in the blast and the ensuing rioting. "From
eyewitness accounts, it appears that it is a suicide attack,"
NWFP police chief Riffat Pasha said.
At least three more persons are
killed in overnight sectarian clashes in the Hangu town to raise
the death toll to 43. Eyewitnesses said the Pakistan Army deployed
more troops in Hangu town and its surroundings to restore order.
Fresh clashes occurred in some of the villages and neighbourhoods
encircling Hangu town.
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February 23
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A bomb exploded at a video shop
in Dera Ismail Khan in NWFP, injuring at least four people. The
explosion occurred in the commercial area of Zafar Colony, said
Ghar Ali Khattak, the city police chief. Dera Ismail Khan lies
about 250 kilometers southwest of Peshawar, the capital of NWFP
bordering Afghanistan.
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March 19
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A ten-year-old boy is killed and
another child injured in a bomb explosion near a police station
in the Mardan City of NWFP. The boys had reportedly picked up
a grenade from a nearby garbage dump and it subsequently exploded.
The police recovered three rocket
launchers from Bannu city. Police officials said the China-made
rocket launchers are found near a bridge, Baran Pul, on the road
connecting Bannu with Frontier Region Bakkakhel and Mir Ali town
in North Waziristan.
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March 30
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Security agencies are looking
for a couple on a suicide mission who recently left their home
in Peshawar. A federal intelligence agency got hold of a cassette
of a couple, Azizullah Hamidullah alias Dr Aziz and his wife Feroza,
which indicated that they had left their home and joined a group
of suicide bombers. In the cassette, Azizullah reportedly informs
his relatives that he and his wife are on a suicide mission and
nobody should try to look for them anywhere. On March 22, the
NWFP home department had released a photograph of Azizullah, aged
between 35 and 40 years, and his wife Feroza to provincial security
agencies and informed them that they might be suicide bombers.
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April 23
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Police in Peshawar, capital city
of the NWFP, seized a cache of ammunition and arrested one person.
The police recovered nine Kalashnikovs, one Kalakov, two repeaters,
a pistol, seven rifles and 50,000 rounds from a truck that is
on its way to Kohat. The Afghan national driver, Faqir, was arrested.
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May 28
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Rejecting reports of Osama bin Laden’s
presence in the remote Kumrat Valley of the district Dir Upper
in NWFP and the threat of a possible US attack against the al
Qaeda chief as
baseless, Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao said, "There
is no such threat… These are mere speculations, mostly raised
by the Hamid Karzai-led Afghan government. There is no possibility
of presence of Osama, or his men in the forests and hard terrains
of Dir Upper, or anywhere else in the country. Hence there is
no threat of any attack by coalition forces."
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June 2
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At least five soldiers and two
suicide bombers are killed and seven soldiers sustained injuries
when a car laden with explosives rammed into a military vehicle
in the Bakakhel area of Bannu in NWFP. The army convoy was reportedly
proceeding from Mirali in North Waziristan to its base camp in
the Bannu district when the attack occurred.
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June 4
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Taliban
leader Mullah Mohammed Omar has reportedly
given a comeback call to all Taliban residing in Afghan refugee
camps located anywhere in Pakistan, particularly those in the
NWFP. The Taliban leadership had put up posters with the message
from Omar. The posters have also been pasted outside Afghan refugee
camps in the NWFP.
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June 6
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The part of a railway track is
blown up in the Nothal area of Dera Murad Jamali disrupting train
services. "Trains have been stopped as the track has not
yet been repaired," He said that two more bombs had been
recovered and defused near the track.
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June 16
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Two female teachers and two children
are killed, as gunmen fired through an open window into the residential
quarters of Government Girls High School at Khwaga Cheri in the
Ghaljo area of Upper Orakzai Agency. The two teachers are employees
of the North West Frontier Province Government’s Barani Area Development
Programme. The two teachers are Shias and their murder might have
been sectarian.
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June 19
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The NWFP Governor, Ali Muhammad
Jan Orakzai, said the Government is holding secret talks with
"various stakeholders" in North Waziristan to reach
a peace deal that would then be ratified by a tribal council.
He, however, declined to identify the "stakeholders"
and how close the Government is to reaching a peace deal.
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June 25
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The Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA)
leaders in NWFP have received threatening letters asking them
to either publicly announce their support for Taliban
and al Qaeda
or face the "consequences". The Non-Government Organisations
operating in areas such as Dera Ismail Khan, Tank, Bannu and Lakki
Marwat have also been warned to stop their work. The letters accuse
MMA leaders of "using Islam and the Taliban to win elections,
but forgetting their promises after assuming power". Some
MMA leaders had also received Rs 1,000-Rs 1,500 with the letters
to "buy their coffins if they fail to announce their support
for Taliban and Al Qaeda".
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June 28
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The North West Frontier Province
Governor, Ali Muhammad Jan Orakzai, welcomed the month-long cease-fire
announced by the Taliban, saying that the Government would "reciprocate".
The truce has held since June 25, barring a suicide blast near
Miranshah on June 26 that killed six security force personnel
at a checkpoint.
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July 1
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The tribal elders, clerics and
elected councillors have vowed to maintain peace in the Bajaur
Agency of NWFP and warned that houses of people taking part in
"anti-state activities" would be burnt down. "The
agency is completely free from Al Qaeda and Taliban," they
said at a jirga (council). Peace committees set up in the
agency have been assisting the administration in maintaining peace
and the peace committees have the authority to punish those found
involved in attacks on Government installations or private buildings,
the council said. It also said that one of the main reasons for
peace and stability in the region is the strict implementation
of the ban on carrying weapons.
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July 2
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Six paramilitary personnel are
killed and seven others sustained injuries when their vehicle
hit an improvised explosive device near an Afghan refugee camp
in the Lower Dir district.
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July 18
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Unidentified gunmen shot dead
a security force (SF) personnel, Mohammed Tariq, at Khar in the
Bajaur Agency of the North West Frontier Province.
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July 19
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Addressing a 45-member inter-tribal
jirga at the Governor’s House in capital Peshwar, the NWFP Governor
Lt-Gen (retd) Ali Muhammad Jan Aurakzai urged the tribal elders
to help the government establish its writ and urged the militants
to leave Pakistan "with honour and dignity".
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August 22
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Security agencies arrested six al
Qaeda suspects, including two foreigners,
from the Hayatabad locality in NWFP.
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October 2
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Two persons are killed while seven
others sustained injuries in a sectarian clash between the Ahl-e-Sunnat
and Shia sects over a controversial shrine in the Orakzai tribal
area of NWFP. The clash reportedly erupted when armed tribesmen
of one sect tried to enter into the disputed Mian Ziarat shrine
situated in Latrey. Consequently, armed tribesmen of the other
sect attacked them with heavy machinery due to which Ishaq Ali
of the Shia sect and Aslam of the Ahl-e-Sunnat are killed while
Alam Syed, Niaz Ali and Qurban of the Shia sect and Aziz, Muqim
Khan, Khawaja and Muhammad Khan of the Ahl-e-Sunnat are wounded.
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November 3
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Militants fired four rockets at
a Frontier Reserve Police (FRP) post in the Kungarpur area of
Bannu in North West Frontier Province. Bannu Police Deputy Inspector
General Abid Ali said that only one rocket hit the FRP post and
damaged the building. No casualties are reported.
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November 6
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Unidentified terrorists fired
three Russian-made rockets at Peshawar. No casualty is, however,
reported from any of the three places, located in the jurisdiction
of Pishtakhara police station at a little distance from each other.
The Russian-made multi-barrel missiles, MBR-12, were fired from
an unknown location towards the city at around 12:10 pm (PST).
One of the rockets landed near a religious seminary in Afridi
Garhi, while another fell in the thickly populated Nawab Abad,
Spina Warai. The third rocket hit the ground of a plot near the
house of one Bukhari Shah in Pawaka.
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November 13
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The North West Frontier Province
Assembly passed a revised version of the controversial Hasba bill
to establish a Taliban-style department under a cleric entrusted
with the task of enforcing Islamic morality. The bill is a revised
version of one that is ruled unconstitutional in 2005 by the Supreme
Court, following a challenge by President Pervez Musharraf under
Article 186 of the 1973 Constitution. The bill provides for
the appointment of an anti-vice ombudsman enjoying sweeping powers
to protect Islamic values and "forbid persons, agencies and
authorities working under the administrative control of the government
to act against Shariah."
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November 16
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At least 22 people are killed
and several others injured in a sectarian clash between the Lashkar-e-Islami
and the Ansaarul Islam in the Bara area of Khyber Agency in NWFP.
An Ansaarul Islam group led by Gul Maidan was heading towards
Aka Khel near Bara when supporters of the Lashkar-e-Islami challenged
them, fearing that the former wanted to take possession of Bara.
The two sides reportedly used heavy weapons in the fight that
continued all day long. In the morning gun battle, supporters
of the Ansaarul Islam were dominant and during exchange of fire,
four of the Lashkar-e-Islami activists were killed. However, in
the clash around noon, Maroofkhel, a sub-tribe of Akakhel joined
hands with the Lashkar-e-Islami, forcing supporters of Ansaarul
Islam to retreat towards Terah Valley. During these clashes, 10
members of the Lashkar-e-Islami and eight of the Ansaarul Islam
were killed.
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December 1
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A bomb attached to a motorcycle
exploded in the Defence Officers Colony area of Peshawar, killing
one person.
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December 4
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A police official was killed and
another wounded when a foreigner, believed to be an Uzbek national,
detonated explosives tied around his body when the police tried
to search him in the Domail area of Bannu. "The police surrounded
the Persian-speaking man’s car, a private taxi, when he refused
a body search and fired at a constable deployed at a check post
on the Kohat-Bannu road," Bannu Deputy Inspector General
of Police, Abid Ali, told reporters. Ali informed that platoon
commander Ahmad Khan attempted to remove the explosives fixed
around the suspect’s body when he exploded. Police arrested the
taxi driver who was driving the suspected militant from Kohat
to Bannu.
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December 5
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An Intelligence Bureau (IB) official
was arrested with explosives near the Chief Minister’s Secretariat
in Peshawar, with Chief Minister Akram Durrani appearing to suggest
that he is the target of a bomb plot hatched by the IB. Durrani
told a press conference that Muhammad Tufail, the IB employee,
was arrested by police at around 11am outside his Peshawar office
while "trying to plant a bomb" in a dustbin.
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December 15
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The Supreme Court stopped the
NWFP Government from enacting the Hasba bill. The court issued
the stay order on a presidential reference — the second such referral
in a year. The provincial assembly had, on November 13, 2006,
passed a revised version of the Hasba Bill proposing the appointment
of an ombudsman for enforcing ‘Islam’s morality code’. But NWFP
Governor Ali Jan Aurakzai withheld assent, terming the bill unconstitutional,
in a letter to the Prime Minister on December 12. A five-member
Supreme Court bench, headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad
Chaudhry, asked the NWFP Chief Secretary, the Advocate-General
and the assembly’s Speaker to appear before it during the third
week of January 2007. The bill provides for the appointment of
an anti-vice ombudsman enjoying sweeping powers to protect Islamic
values and "forbid persons, agencies and authorities working under
the administrative control of the government to act against Shariah."
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December 16
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Three brothers, suspected to be
linked with the al Qaeda, are arrested at Darra Adam Khel in the
NWFP. Security force personnel raided Dalil Khel village and arrested
Dil Aram, Fazal Rehman and Ahmed Nawaz, all sons of Yaqoob, said
sources, adding that their leader escaped. They are believed to
be involved in the Dargai suicide blast on November 8, 2006, in
which 42 soldiers were killed and 39 others wounded.
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December 26
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One person was killed and two
are injured when a powerful time bomb, planted in a car, exploded
in a parking area outside the Peshawar airport. Police said the
bomb, weighing around two kilograms, completely destroyed the
car it is planted in, in addition to razing the boundary wall
of Risalla Lane of the Pakistan Army ground.
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