Firing at school van in Swat claims one life, injures two

ISLAMABAD: A school van’s driver was killed and two children were injured as unknown militants sprayed bullets at the vehicle in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Monday morning.

The incident happened when the driver was taking children to school in the Swat district of the province, said the reports.

The militants fled the scene after carrying out the attack and a search operation to arrest them was underway in the area.

The injured children were shifted to a nearby hospital by the rescue teams.

Police cordoned off the attack site and an investigation into the incident was underway.

People fear Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) is making a comeback in Swat, despite government assurances to the contrary, after several attacks in the past month.

A bomb blast on September 13, which killed a former member of the civilian resistance to the Taliban’s rule and seven other people, was followed a few weeks later by the abduction of a policeman and two military officers. The group has released videos of their captives.

Fayaz Zafar, a local journalist who has covered militancy in the area, said the Taliban were taking a different approach from their early days.

Before launching their insurgency and seizing control of Swat in 2007, the Taliban had first infiltrated local communities, slowly gaining people’s confidence through religious sermons and charity work, Zafar said.

But “in this new resurrection, the Taliban have directly taken up weapons,” he said.

However, this time people have been quick to show their opposition to the militants, with thousands staging demonstrations against their return and calling for peace in Swat.

Such protests were rare when the Taliban previously had a presence in the area, Zafar said.

Meanwhile, the civil society, traders and general public here Monday staged a protest against firing a school van at Gul Bagh and demanded arrest of the attackers.

The people staged a protest demonstration at Nishat Chowk Mingora to condemn the firing on a school van at Gul Bagh where the driver was killed and two students were injured.

Condemning the attack, the protestors demanded the KP Government to take prompt measures of arrest of the attackers and award them exemplary punishment. They brought the body of the slain driver to Nishat Chowk and blocked Mingora-Saidu Sharif road for traffic.

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