July 16, 2022
By Our Correspondent
PESHAWAR: Unknown motorcyclists on Sunday last week lobbed a grenade at the home of a senior member of the Awami National Party (ANP) in Peshawar’s Dir Bahar Colony, in what is being seen as intensification of targeted attacks on political workers and officials in the province since the past several months.
Senator Haji Hidayatullah and his family were inside their home when the incident occured, however all occupants remained uninjured. Police believe the grenade was locally made, but a complete report is awaited while investigations are ongoing.
The ANP, a leftist nationalist party based in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, has strongly condemned the attack. Member of the National Assembly (MNA) Sardar Hussain Babak asserts that party leaders and workers are not intimidated by these attacks, and remain committed to the fight for supremacy of the Parliament and the rule of law.
The party claims that of 120 incidents of terrorism in the province, the ANP was targeted in 100.
Other parties have suffered, too. On Thursday, July 14, unknown assailants gunned down one Qari Samiuddin, a local leader of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), and his colleague, Hafiz Nauman Dawar, in their car in Bichi Road, near Mirali Town in North Waziristan. Three days prior, on Monday, another group of unidentified gunmen killed the party’s councilor-elect, Malik Murtaza, in the same region.
The rising number of targeted killings and attacks on political leaders and workers in the province is cited as the reason for many activists, especially those belonging to the ANP and other organizations, to hold strong reservations over negotiations between the Federal Government and the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TLP).
