ANP lost prominent leaders in attacks in recent years

PESHAWAR: Some of the prominent leaders and elected representatives of the Awami National Party have come under attack in the provincial capital during the last few years and the latest to lose his life was the party’s city chapter president Sartaj Khan.

The attacks have made it difficult for the party leadership to move freely even during the election campaigns.

Though leaders of various political parties have come under bomb attacks, target killings and suicide bombings in Peshawar, the number of ANP workers and leaders being targeted remained higher.

They included two members from the prominent Bilour family — Bashir Ahmad Bilour and his son Haroon Bashir Bilour. Both lost their lives in suicide attacks. The last such incident was the target-killing of ANP city district president and district council member, Sartaj Khan, on Saturday.

Though police are investigating the murder from all angles and are yet to find the motive behind the killing, the ANP leadership believes it was a message to the party.

“The assassination of Sartaj Khan and attack on another worker in Swat was a clear message to the party to leave the field. The target killing of the party workers is a failure of the state institutions and provincial government,” the provincial president of the ANP Aimal Wali Khan said in a statement on Monday. He warned his party would avenge the killing of its workers if this did not stop.

Aimal Wali said whenever elections are held his party was put on the hit list of terrorists. However, he made it clear that his party would not succumb to any pressure.

ANP has announced a rally outside the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa assembly for today to protest the murder of Sartaj Khan and targeting of other party activists. Before Sartaj Khan, a number of ANP leaders and workers lost lives in various attacks.

“The mainstream and the local leadership of the ANP have been under attack for years. We have lost some of the senior most leaders in the attacks in Peshawar as well as other parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa,” Arbab Kamal Ahmad, the ANP candidate from NA-29 in last year’s elections, told The News. He added the security of every individual is the responsibility of the state.

“Almost the entire leadership of ANP has been wiped out in Peshawar in the last few years. From ministers to MPAs, office-bearers at a different level have come under the terrorist attacks. Peshawar is definitely the city of martyrs for ANP,” Dr Naumanul Haq, ANP member in the Peshawar district council, told The News.

Those targeted in Peshawar include the then senior minister in the KP government Bashir Ahmad Bilour. He was targetted by a suicide bomber near Qissa Khwani bazaar soon after he attended a function in December 2012. He along with many others lost their lives in the attack.

His son, Haroon Bashir Bilour, was targeted in another suicide attack in Kohati bazaar 14 days before the July 2018 general elections last year.

Many party workers were killed along with Haroon Bilour in the attack while a large number of others sustained injuries. His widow Samar Haroon Bilour later decided to contest on the seat of her spouse and father-in-law. She made it to the KP Assembly in the by-polls.

An ANP MPA from Peshawar, Alamzeb Khan, was martyred in a roadside bomb attack in Momin Town, Dilazak Road in February 2009. Besides, former district president of the party Mian Mushtaq Ahmad and a senior leader Anwarul Haq were killed in targeted attacks.

Besides, a large number of party leaders including former federal minister Ghulam Ahmad Bilour, central general secretary Mian Iftikhar Hussain, provincial minister Syed Aqil Shah and many others survived suicide attacks, bomb blasts and firing incidents in the city in recent years. According to ANP leaders, the number of its workers and leaders targeted in different parts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is in hundreds.