PESHAWAR: Nine members of a family, mostly women and children, were killed and another person sustained injuries in a brazen attack when rivals opened fire on them at a house in Badaber town on the outskirts of the provincial capital on Tuesday.
Police officials said the armed men entered the house of Malik Aman and Ishaq in Badaber, 10 kilometers to the south of the provincial capital, and opened indiscriminate firing, killing nine members of a family on the spot.
Another member of the family was wounded who was shifted to the hospital. Though women and children are not targetted in enmities anywhere in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, only females and minors were targeted in this attack. The gory scenes of the incident shocked the entire area.
“Six among those killed are females, including five women and three young girls. A male child is also among those killed in the barbaric act,” a police official said.
The youngest of the deceased was a few-month-old infant, Affan. One of those wounded was under treatment at the hospital.
The attackers escaped from the spot. Some reports said two armed men broke into the house and opened fire on the entire family. Police officials said they had collected evidence from the spot while the case would be registered as per the statement of the family.
A relative of the deceased said he had been calling the police station concerned for a long time when the family was attacked but the response was poor. He said that many lives could have been saved had the cops picked up the call in time. Senior police officials, including SSP Operations, Kashif Zulfiqar and SSP investigation Sahibzada Sajjad visited the spot. The two officials assured the family that the killers would be arrested soon, they added.
An official said there was some dispute between the attackers and the victim’s family. Innumerable blood feuds are going on for years, even decades, between families and groups across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that claim hundreds of lives every year. Many local jirgas and dispute resolution councils set up all over KP try to settle hundreds of enmities.