PESHAWAR, Pakistan, March 21, (Agencies): At least seventeen people were killed by a car bomb as they waited for food at a camp in northwest Pakistan for those displaced by fighting between government forces and Islamist militants, police said.
The bomb exploded on Thursday in the Jalozai camp in Nowshera in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, an area bordering Afghanistan and a stronghold for insurgents bent on toppling Pakistan’s US-backed government.
“Food was being distributed among the internally displaced persons when the blast took place,” Nowshera police chief Mohammad Hussain told Reuters, adding that 33 people were wounded.
The camp is home to people who have fled violence in ethnic Pashtun areas along the border with Afghanistan where al Qaeda and Taleban militants operate.
Local officials belonging to provincial disaster management authorities and a female worker from a non-governmental organisation (NGO) were among the dead, officials said.
Hundreds of thousands of people have fled from conflict over the past five years or so, from the tribal areas along the border and from elsewhere, such as the Swat valley, northwest of Islamabad.
Many people have been able to go home, especially those from Swat, but thousands remain in camps.
The Pakistani Taleban denied responsibility for the blast. Spokesman Ihsanullah Ihsan told Reuters it was “inhuman and un-Islamic to target innocents”.
The blast comes days after the elected government completed its full five-year term, the first in the country’s volatile history to do so.
The government has struggled with Taleban violence, sectarian unrest, chronic power cuts and a fragile economy. General elections will be held on May 11.
The people living in Jalozai camp, which lies on the outskirts of the main northwest city of Peshawar, are Pakistanis who have been displaced by fighting between the army and the Taleban in the country’s northwest.
Peshawar is located on the border of the tribal region, the Taleban’s main sanctuary in the country, and has been hit with scores of bombings in recent years. The Taleban have been waging a bloody insurgency against the government in an attempt to establish an Islamic state and end Pakistan’s cooperation with the United States in fighting militancy.
Most of the people hit by the attack were from the Bajur and Khyber tribal areas along the Afghan border, said police officer Mohammad Zahid. The army has carried out operations against the Pakistani Taleban in both those areas.
An official with one of the aid groups was working in an office about 30 meters (yards) from where the vehicle exploded.
“It was very terrible, very terrible. We were very near. It was very loud,” said Mumtaz Bangash. “I have seen so many injured people.”
Among the dead were a security guard and an employee of a Pakistani aid group who were walking by when the bomb exploded, said Faiz Muhammed, who runs Khyber Paktunkhwa province’s programs to help displaced people. The rest of the 13 killed were camp residents.
Many of the refugees get rations from the United Nations’ World Food Program, which feeds nearly 1 million people a month at Jalozai and other distribution points across the northwest.
Jean-Luc Siblot, the program’s country director for Pakistan, said the organization would temporarily suspend its operations while discussions continue with the government on how to secure the food distribution centers. But he said there was “no question” that the World Food Program would resume operations soon.
Muhammed said he and his staff would continue helping people at the camp despite the blast and called on aid groups to step up with even more help in the future.
“We need to show these people that we will not be deterred,” he said. “For the life of me I cannot understand who would try to sabotage these people who are already affected by a war.”
Jalozai, about 30 kms (19 miles) southwest of Peshawar, is one of three camps in Pakistan for people displaced by the fighting in the northwest.
It’s run by the Pakistani government with assistance from various international aid agencies and is essentially a small city, with about 57,000 refugees living there.
The population ebbs and flows depending on the ongoing military operations in the tribal areas. In recent days, refugees from intense fighting in the remote Tirah Valley showed up at the camp looking for help, said Muhammed.
Jalozai has schools, a hospital and job training programs designed to help people prepare for their eventual return home. Representatives from the various aid groups constantly travel back and forth to the camp, and foreign delegations often visit.