At least 42 people have been killed in a land feud between tribes in northwestern Pakistan, officials said on Monday, during days of fighting with machine guns and mortars.
Inter-family feuds are common in Pakistan but they can be particularly protracted and violent in the mountainous northwestern region of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where communities abide by traditional tribal honor codes.
The Sunni Muslim Madagi and Shiite Mali Khel tribes have been fighting since Wednesday, when a gunman opened fire at a council negotiating a decades-long dispute over farmland, local police official Murtaza Hussain said.
No one was wounded in that attack but Hussain said it reignited longstanding religious tensions between the clans, who live side-by-side in the district of Kurram on the border with Afghanistan.
“A ceasefire was achieved in Kurram tribal district through government efforts. However, shooting resumed later at night,” said a senior official from the provincial interior ministry in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
He said local police had put the death toll at 42 — all men — with 183 wounded, including some women, since Wednesday. The death toll had been put at 35 on Sunday, with more than 150 wounded.
Tribal fighters are bound by the honor code not to target women, children, and homes.
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said the violence has taken a “heavy toll on ordinary citizens” whose movements have been curtailed by the violence.
“HRCP calls on the KP government to ensure that the ceasefire being brokered, holds. All disputes, whether over land or born of sectarian conflict, must be resolved peacefully through negotiations convened by the KP government with all stakeholders represented,” it said in a statement.
Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country where Shiites frequently face discrimination and violence.
Kurram is part of the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas, a semi-autonomous area that was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in 2018.
The move brought the region into the legal and administrative mainstream, although police and security forces frequently struggle to enforce the rule of law there.