KARACHI, Pakistan – Gunmen killed four aid workers in a trap in the northwestern Pakistani district of North Waziristan on Monday, police said in an attack that could indicate a resurgence of insurgency in the region bordering Afghanistan. was a stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban.
Unidentified assailants in the city of Mir Ali fired at a vehicle carrying aid workers, all of whom were Pakistanis and linked to a program to develop domestic skills for women.
The four aid workers, all women, were killed and the male driver was injured. A fifth aid worker, also a woman, survived the attack by hiding in a nearby house, police said in a statement. The attackers fled to the nearby mountains.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan condemned the attack and demanded that the government bring the attackers to justice.
“It is the responsibility of the government to protect the lives and property of citizens at all costs,” the commission said in a statement.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the ambush. But the shooting fits into a pattern of attacks on aid workers and polio drugs across the country attributed by officials to the Pakistani Taliban.
Waziristan was the pivot of the rebel group for many years, until strong pressure from the Pakistani army around 2014 cleared most militants and brought a semblance of security to the region. Analysts and residents now fear that various factions of the Pakistani Taliban seeking refuge for military operations in Afghanistan’s border provinces have regrouped.
Regular reports of targeted assassinations on tribal elders, roadside bombings and clashes with security forces have raised fears that the region, which had tribal status before being fully integrated into the rest of Pakistan through legislation in 2018, militant control will fall back.
Mohsin Dawar, a Member of Parliament elected from North Waziristan and a leader of an ethnic Pashtun movement seeking equal rights, posted on Twitter, “The wave of indiscriminate killings continues unabated in our region, without an end to it.”
“Where is the state?” he asked.
In a separate attack, five military members were killed and another wounded when militants, according to the Pakistani army, attacked a security checkpoint in South Waziristan late on Thursday night.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement, saying the military had carried out an active operation against the group in the region.
The army also said two militants and a member of the army were killed during a search carried out on Friday night.
Muhammad Amir Rana, director of Pak Institute of Peace Studies, a research organization based in Islamabad, said the increase in assaults in the former tribal districts was a cause for concern for national security. But, he added, the militants may not be able to regain their old strength because the security forces are still actively hunting them down.
“The reunification of the Pakistani Taliban poses a threat to former tribal districts, but now they are unable to regain the power it had before 2014,” he said. Rana said.
The killing of the four aid workers has also renewed security fears among charities and aid groups working in Pakistan, particularly in the former tribal districts.
An aid worker in the tribal areas, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said the government as well as the militants viewed him and others working for aid groups with suspicion since the raid on Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. the city of Abbottabad in 2011. The U.S. intelligence service has reportedly launched a false vaccination campaign in the area to collect DNA samples to confirm Bin Laden’s presence.
The aid worker said the recent attack would once again force aid organizations to reconsider their security measures and decide whether to continue in the former tribal areas.