Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Taliban kill Shia children in Pakistan

In yet another brazen attack on Shiites in Pakistan, the Taliban have relentlessly demonstrated their brutality and intolerance. This is not the first time that the Taliban have attacked Shiite children in Pakistan. A few months earlier, the Taliban attacked a school bus in the NWFP province killing many children.

What surprises me the most is that despite the overwhelming evidence of the brutality and savagery demonstrated by the Taliban against the ordinary citizens in Pakistan, the Taliban remain popular amongst some Muslims in Europe and North America, who think of the Taliban as the harbingers of a Muslim Caliphate!

What kind of a caliphate would these ignorant, illiterate, and savage tribesmen from NWFP and Afghanistan would establish that has in its foundations the blood of thousands of innocents.

From Dawn.com on September 8, 2009

PESHAWAR: Taliban militants attacked a group of boys on their way to school in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday, killing four and wounding three, a government official said.

The high school students were apparently attacked because they were minority Shia Muslims. Taliban militants are from the majority Sunni community and attack Shias as part of their strategy to fight the government.

'They opened...fire on the students and we have reports of four deaths,' said Khaista Gul, an official in the administration of the Orakzai ethnic Pashtun tribal region, where the attack took place.

Tribesmen retaliated after the attack and killed at least two militants and wounded several, said residents of the area near the region's main town of Kalaya.

Government aircraft attacked militants in a village, 30 km east of Kalaya, killing six of them and destroying four hideouts, said another government official, Sajjad Khan.

Pakistani Taliban have stepped up attacks across the northwest since mid-2007, raising concern about country's stability.

Militants in northwest Pakistan also support the Afghan Taliban and many cross over the largely unguarded border to fight US-led foreign forces there.

Pakistani security forces have had some success against the Taliban in parts of the northwest this year and the chief of the Pakistani Taliban, Baitullah Mehsud, was killed in a US missile strike early last month.

Orakzai is a stronghold of Hakimullah Mehsud who has been appointed the new Pakistani Taliban chief.

Pakistani and US officials said the militants were in disarray after Baitullah was killed and attacks appeared to tail off though they have been picking up again.

Twenty-two Pakistani border guards were killed in a suicide bomb attack at the main border crossing with Afghanistan in the Khyber region, another Hakimullah stronghold, on August 27.

Pakistani security forces launched an offensive against militants in Khyber last week and nearly 120 insurgents have been killed, according to officials. Independent casualty figures are not available.

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