17 Hindus die in Pakistan clashes
Seventeen minority Hindus were killed when their temple was hit by rockets during fighting between renegade tribesmen and security forces in a tribal town in south-western Pakistan, a government official said today.
The fighting in the town of Dera Bugti erupted last Thursday after the tribesmen allegedly attacked a convoy of pick-up trucks carrying paramilitary troops along a mountain road.
Officials have said up to 45 people, including eight soldiers, were killed in the clashes between the Frontier Corps troops and Bugti tribesmen, who dominate Dera Bugti.
It was an alarming escalation of a low-level rebellion in Baluchistan, the country’s poorest province, where tribesmen are demanding more returns from the natural gas extracted from their territory and resent the army’s moves to set up garrisons in the region.
Abdul Samad Lasi, the top government administrator in the area, said today that several homes of Hindus near the temple in Dera Bugti were also damaged by rockets in the fighting.
“This is true that some 17 Hindus were killed and their temple was severely damaged,” Lasi said.
“Both sides were shooting at each other. It is difficult to say whose fire destroyed the temple,” Lasi said by satellite telephone from inside a base at Dera Bugti where government officials and paramilitary troops were surrounded by armed tribesmen.
Yesterday, Awais Ahmed Ghani, the governor of south-western Baluchistan province where Dera Bugti is located, said some 300 troops and government officials were holed up at the base.
Helicopters were airlifting them supplies.
The tribesmen have reportedly set up road blocks and dug trenches along roads into Dera Bugti.
Dera Bugti is a remote district with population of 84,000, about 50,000 living inside the town, including a small community of Hindus. Pakistan is an Islamic state, but about 3% of its 150 million people are from other faiths, mostly Hindus and Christians.
