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Tag: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

  • Children stuck 1,200 feet in the air as chairlift cable snaps in Northwest of Pakistan

    Children stuck 1,200 feet in the air as chairlift cable snaps in Northwest of Pakistan

    An immediate rescue mission is happening in Pakistan to save eight kids and two grown-ups who are stuck in a chairlift hanging 1,200 feet above a mountainous area in the northwest part of the country.

    The kids were on their way to school in a place called Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when one of the cables holding the chairlift broke at 9 in the morning. According to rescue official Bilal Ahmad Faizi, it was the time in the local area on Tuesday.

    Tanveer Ur Rehman, who works in the Battagram district, said that rescue work is happening on the ground because the chairlift system is very high up.

    “The chairlift is suspended 1,200 feet (365 meters) in the air,” he said. We can’t rescue people without a helicopter, and we need experienced rescue workers to make sure everything goes well.

    The country’s organization in charge of dealing with disasters has asked for helicopters to help save the passengers who are stuck, as CNN has reported.

    The chairlift connects two towns and moves with the help of two cables. One of the cables broke, according to Faizi.

    Many kids who live far away in the mountains use cable cars to go to school and come back home. Some of these are not regularly taken care of and can be a dangerous way to travel.

    This story is still being written and is not yet finished.

    More things will be coming soon.

  • TTP assassinates six police officers in an ambush in northwest Pakistan

    In one of the deadliest attacks in months, Pakistan Taliban attackers ambush a police vehicle in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

    In one of the deadliest attacks in months, at least six police officers were killed in an ambush while patrolling in a vehicle in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

    According to local officials, the incident occurred on Wednesday morning in the city of Lakki Marwat, about 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the provincial capital of Peshawar.

    The police said, there were no security cameras installed in the area where the incident occurred. An investigation has already begun.

    In a statement, the banned armed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, claimed responsibility for the attack, adding that its attackers made it back to safe havens.

    The Pakistani Taliban, allied with the Afghan Taliban, has been waging an armed rebellion in Pakistan for more than a decade, calling for the stricter enforcement of Islamic laws, the release of their members from government custody and a reduced Pakistani military presence in tribal-dominated regions.

    In May this year, the group extended an indefinite ceasefire agreement with Islamabad, with the talks brokered by the Taliban government in Kabul.

    But attacks by the Pakistani Taliban have not stopped, mainly in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

    In a statement, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office condemned the latest attack, calling the police a “vanguard against terrorism”.

    “Let us make no mistake. Terrorism continues to be one of Pakistan’s foremost problems. Our armed forces and police have valiantly fought the scourge,” he tweeted.

    Police officials told Al Jazeera it was the fourth such attack on law enforcement officials in the past few weeks.

    According to data compiled by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS), an Islamabad-based research organisation, at least 65 such attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa this year, killing at least 98 people and wounding 75.

    Seven of those attacks took place in Lakki Marwat, PIPS data shows.

    PIPS director and security analyst Amir Rana told Al Jazeera that while the government and the Pakistani Taliban have a ceasefire in place, the armed group portrays its attacks as defensive manoeuvres.

    “Security forces face this issue that whenever they get complaints of abductions or extortion, they carry out their operations which the TTP says is a clear violation of the ceasefire agreement, and then they retaliate,” he said.