Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attacks in retaliation against crackdown on ‘terror’ relief camps

ISLAMABAD - Over half a dozen terror strikes rocked Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Monday killing 45 people and injuring nearly 100 others, which analysts believe was in retaliation against the government’s crackdown on flood relief camps being run by some of the terror organisations.

While no group claimed the responsibility for the deadly attacks across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, observers said that the attack was possibly in protest against the administration’s decision to shut down 16 flood relief camps in the region, which were said to have being run by charity wings of terror groups like the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM), Harkat-ul-Jihad al-Islami, Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and Hizb-ut-Tehrir.

Even the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) against which the Pakistan Army is fighting an open war in various tribal areas, is quietly operating in the northwest extending relief to the affected people in what is seen as an “image building” process.

The crackdown on terror relief camps came days after President Asif Ali Zardari and top US Senator John Kerry expressed fears of terror groups exploiting the situation emanating from of the devastating floods, but analysts pointed out that the move to shut down the relief camps was a “pre-emptive” one.

They underlined that the government needs to focus more on rescue and relief issues rather than opening new fronts of confrontation amid the catastrophe, Xinhua reports. (ANI)