Pakistan sends troops into troubled village

Press, 21 February 1987, Page 10

Pakistan sends troops into troubled village

By

RAJA ASGHAR

ef

Reuters (through NZPA) Islamabad

Pakistani authorities have sent troops into a village to keep order alter the killing of 11 people by a lorry bomb triggered street violence and a gun battle between angry, inhabitants and Afghan rebels.

Most of the dead and more than 60 wounded .were children. Thursday’s blast outside a guerrilla office destroyed a primary school across the road and several mud houses.

Onlookers said paramilitary troops moved into Qamardin Garhi after villagers retaliated by. opening fire on . the guerrilla office. One of the villagers was killed and three wounded when the rebels fired back.

Hundreds of villagers, blaming the guerrilla presence for the blast, later went on a rampage. They set on fire 12 vehicles of the Jamiat-i-Islami guerrilla party, outside whose office the parked lorry exploded. Crowds in the village and in Peshawar, capital of the North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, were broken up by the police

with tear-gas. Official sources said extra security measures were taken to prevent any violent protests after the Friday' Muslim prayers. * ' "*

An emergency meeting of the j provincial cabinet ordered "law-enforcing agencies to - x accelerate protective measures and take all-out steps to save the people’s life,”-.! the official APP news agency said. ..." ..

No-one has claimed responsibility for the blast, the latest in a series, over several months in the region. The area is , home for most of an estimated three million Afghan refugees who fled from eight years of war in their country. Most of the-guer-rilla parties fighting the Soviet-backed Afghan Government are also based in the province. Pakistani officials have blamed previous explosions on what they call Afghan . secret police agents sent to undermine the region to punish Pakistan for supporting the rebels.

Opposition politicians have blamed the guerrilla presence'‘ tor the bombs and the spread of illegal