50 feared dead as Afghans storm across border
our correspondent
Friday, April 22, 2011
PESHAWAR: According to unconfirmed reports, scores of Frontier Corps (FC) and Dir Levies personnel and policemen were killed, injured and kidnapped in Lower Dir on Thursday in an early morning assault by an Afghan ‘Lashkar’ comprising several hundred armed men.
So far however, the death of only two personnel of the paramilitary FC could be confirmed. They were identified as Amjad and Rozi Mohammad. Injuries to seven others soldiers was also confirmed as they were brought to the District Headquarters Hospital, Timergarha in Lower Dir. Unconfirmed reports put the death toll of the initial attack and a later clash between Pakistani reinforcements and the Afghan attackers at 50, while 27 FC and police personnel are feared kidnapped and believed to have been taken across the border to Afghanistan by the retreating attackers.
Local sources said the attack by the unidentified gunmen on the police and FC posts at Miskini Darra in Kharki area near the Pak-Afghan border was launched at around 4 am Thursday. The attackers came from across the Durand Line border and entered Pakistani territory and blasted away at the lightly defended posts with heavy weapons before storming them and overpowering the FC personnel and policemen. The number of the attackers was stated to be in hundreds according to the most conservative accounts.
According to reports received in Peshawar, at the time of attack there were around 30 FC men at the border posts along with 10 policemen and four Dir Levies personnel. They were completely taken by surprise by the overwhelming numerical superiority and massive firepower of the attackers. Some of the Pakistani border personnel were kidnapped while one managed to escape and later provided authorities with details of the attack.
Initial reports said the attackers could be militants. Local people however blamed the Nato forces and the Afghan security personnel for the attack on the Pakistani border posts arguing that such a large scale amassing of troops and operation could not have escaped the scrutiny of the NATO forces and could not have been possible without their connivance.
The sources said that contingents of the FC and the police rushed to the scene shortly after the attack but the gunmen ambushed them too and further casualties took place. The sources said later the Pakistan army gunship helicopters pounded the mountainous area in the Kharki area and Pakistan Army soldiers were dispatched to the area to reinforce the personnel at the border. The situation was tense in the area as unconfirmed reports kept making the round that all the Pakistani soldiers and cops manning the border posts had been killed or kidnapped. Some reports put the death toll at around 50, though this couldn’t be confirmed. The reports said 27 soldiers and cops had been kidnapped.
The attack took place in the wake of the assassination of a pro-Afghan government commander Malik Zareen, his son and ten supporters in a recent suicide bombing in the Asmar area of Kunar bordering Pakistan. Malik Zareen lived in Miskeeni Darra in the Lower Dir district and held dual nationality. His son was a nazim of union council Miskeeni Darra. It wasn’t known if the Afghan attack on the Pakistani border posts on Thursday was in any way linked to the assassination of Malik Zareen for which President Hamid Karzai had blamed Afghanistan’s “historical enemy,” a reference to Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban had denied their involvement in the suicide bombing against Malik Zareen, but suspicion largely fell on them due to their ongoing campaign of assassinating Afghan government officials and pro-Karzai tribal elders.
50 feared dead as Afghans storm across border
