Law & order situation deteriorating in KP

PESHAWAR: Houses of three lawmakers from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have come under attack in the last four days as the law and order situation continues to deteriorate in many parts of the province.

On Monday night, armed men attacked the ancestral home of Member Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Aghaz Gandapur, grandson of former chief minister Inayatullah Khan Gandapur, in the Kulachi tehsil of Dera Ismail Khan district.

A police constable, Saifur Rehman, deployed for security at the house, sustained critical injuries in the attack and later embraced martyrdom.

“Our ancestral house at Kulachi was attacked by unknown gunmen. Police constable Saifur Rehman embraced martyrdom in the line of duty,” Inamullah Khan Gandapur, a senior bureaucrat and an uncle of Aghaz, said. The family of Aghaz Gandapur was attacked multiple times in the past.

An uncle of Aghaz and a former provincial minister Israrullah Gandapur embraced martyrdom in a suicide attack in his hujra (male guest house) on October 16, 2013.

He was receiving guests at the hujra when one of the visitors detonated explosives strapped around his vest. Israr was replaced by his brother Ikramullah Gandapur in the KP Assembly and later a member of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government as provincial minister. He was also martyred in another suicide attack in 2018. After Ikram, his son, Aghaz, contested polls from his constituency and was elected an MPA.

Before Aghaz Gandapur, the house of an MPA of the Awami National Party Faisal Zeb was attacked in Shangla last Friday.

Armed attackers opened fire on his house and continued firing shots for quite some time before they escaped. No casualty was reported in the attack.

A day before, a grenade was hurled at the house of a former federal minister and MNA Shehryar Afridi in Kohat on Thursday night.

The explosive, however, fell near the boundary wall and went off without causing any damage or casualty.

Last month, a PTI MPA Malik Liaqat came under attack in Lower Dir. He was critically injured in the attack while his brother, nephew, and two policemen lost their lives in the ambush.

Apart from the lawmakers, some prominent elders and political workers have been targeted by unidentified attackers in different parts of the province.