ISLAMABAD, 2 May 2006 — Amir Muhammad Khan, the uncle of North Western Frontier Province Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, was gunned down by unknown gunmen in Bannu on Sunday. The Press Secretary of Chief Minister Akram Durrani Behr Mand told Arab News via telephone: “Around Sunday noon unknown gunmen attacked Amir Muhammad Khan’s jeep killing him and injuring two of his body guards.”
Durrani’s father too had been assassinated.
The continuing hostilities between the military and the militants have claimed the life of another pro-government tribal leader in troubled North Waziristan region, officials confirmed yesterday.
Maulvi Janat Mir’s body was discovered near a graveyard of Mir Air area, some 10 kilometers east of region’s headquarters Miranshah, a week after he went missing.
“Yes, we have found his body, “a senior official in the town of Mir Ali, Fida Mohammad. He had been strangled, he said.
Mir was actively mediating between the government and the suspected militants in the region where military operations since July 2005 have left about 324 suspected terrorist dead.
In Chitral local clerics held a protest march against the opening of an FBI office in remote city of NWFP. Protest March was led by the member of National Assembly Maulana Akbar Chitrali.
Meanwhile, tribal militants fighting for greater autonomy in Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan blew up a railway track and bridge yesterday, officials said.
The attacks came a day after the government banned Baluch nationalist leaders from traveling outside Pakistan. Three of the ten leaders on the government blacklist were members of Parliament.
The militants used heavy explosives to blow up a railway track and bridge in Noushki and Kohlu districts. Railway officials said six bombs were planted on the track linking the provincial capital Quetta with the Iranian border town of Zahidan, but only two exploded.
“God saved us from great damage as four other bombs did not go off and were defused,” Mushtaq Ahmed, a railway official in Noushki, said.
— With input from agencies
