10 years after Malala, man killed in a school van attack in northwest Pakistan
In Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, armed men opened fire on a school van on Monday, killing the driver and wounding a youngster. Following the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, concerns have been raised about Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan’s (TTP) expanding presence in the nation’s northwest at the time of this occurrence.
A day after a decade of the attempted murder of Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai by the TTP, an outlawed organisation, the shooting occurred in Swat’s Char Bagh neighbourhood. According to the report, the incident happened on Monday in front of the Knowledge City School in the Guli Bagh neighbourhood.
Numerous students and teachers from private schools in the Swat district protested against terrorist activity in the area after the news broke. The law and order situation in Swat has allegedly been deteriorating for the past three months, according to hundreds of demonstrators who chanted slogans calling for peace in the area.
“We know who is behind the current drama. We know why the security forces are helpless against a few so-called terrorists,” claimed a protester.
A Pakistan-based rights organisation condemned the “terrorist attack” on a school bus in Swat, saying, “Swat’s residents are right to hold the security forces responsible for failing to enforce the state’s writ.”
The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan (HRCP) tweeted, “HRCP strongly condemns the terrorist attack on a school bus in Swat, in which the driver was killed and a young girl injured,”
“While the perpetrators must be brought to book promptly, the state must also stop ceding space to extremists—a lesson it has consistently failed to learn at the expense of its people,” the group added.
