PESHAWAR: An eight-month peace agreement was reached on Saturday between warring factions in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s restive Kurram district, with all sides pledging to resolve future disputes through legal means, according to a statement shared by a police official.
Kurram, a tribal district of around 600,000 people bordering Afghanistan, has long been a flashpoint for sectarian violence between Shia and Sunni tribes. Clashes between the two sides have killed more than 150 people since November, while militant attacks and retaliatory violence have claimed even more lives of people and security personnel during months of unrest.
The violence also created a humanitarian crisis, with road blockades cutting off access to food, fuel and life-saving medicines, leading to the reported deaths of dozens of children.
“Representatives of both sides agreed to maintain peace for a period of eight months in order to prevent any kind of conflict in the area and to work toward improving the situation,” said a statement shared by district police spokesperson Riaz Khan.
The deal was struck following a jirga, or tribal council, held in the presence of provincial authorities and the local administration.
The agreement builds on the Kohat Agreement, a peace framework developed last year that called for a ceasefire, disarmament, the dismantling of private bunkers in the area and government oversight to ensure sustainable peace.
“Under this agreement, if any untoward incident occurs on the road, legal action will be taken against the responsible party in accordance with the ‘Kohat Agreement,’” the statement continued.
“Both sides pledged that in the event of any incident that could harm peace in the area, they would consult with each other and seek a solution through legal means,” it added.
It was also agreed that the main road through Kurram, closed for months due to violence, will be formally reopened in a joint announcement by the government and state institutions to ease public hardship and facilitate travel.

PESHAWAR: Eleven people were killed in drone strikes in northern Pakistan on Saturday launched by the army against the Taliban, who had killed seven soldiers a day earlier, police told AFP.
Three drone strikes were carried out on Friday night in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity, targeting “Pakistani Taliban hideouts” in the region bordering Afghanistan where violence has erupted in recent months.
“It was only this morning that we learned that two women and three children were among the victims,” he said.
“In protest, local residents placed the bodies of the victims on the road,” saying that they were “innocent civilians” killed in the strikes, he added.
Another police source said that “an investigation is under way to establish whether Taliban fighters were indeed present at the sites at the time of the attack.”
“It is too early to say whether the places affected were civilian areas or whether they were sheltering Taliban,” he added.
The Pakistani Taliban — known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) — announced in mid-March a “spring campaign” against security forces, threatening “ambushes, targeted attacks, suicide attacks and strikes.”
The TTP has since claimed responsibility for around 100 attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In the same province, “armed Taliban” fighters hiding in a house shot and killed seven soldiers who were carrying out an operation against them, a police source said on Saturday.
During the shoot-out, which lasted several hours, the army deployed helicopter gunships, killing eight Taliban, while six other soldiers were wounded, according to the source.
Since January 1, more than 190 people, mostly members of the security forces, have been killed in violence carried out by armed groups fighting against the government both in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and in Balochistan provinces, according to an AFP count.
In Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, a blast from a bomb planted by separatists on a motorbike also killed a soldier and a civilian further south in Balochistan, police officer Mohsin Ali told AFP.
The area was the scene of a spectacular attack last month when militants held hundreds of train passengers hostage and killed dozens of off-duty soldiers.
Attacks are reported every day in Pakistan’s western regions bordering Afghanistan, where the army regularly says it is killing “terrorists” during sweep operations, without, however, curbing the violence.
Attacks have increased in Pakistan in particular since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan in August 2021.
Islamabad accuses the Taliban government in Kabul of failing to eliminate militants who take refuge on Afghan soil to prepare attacks against Pakistan.
The Taliban government denies these accusations and in return accuses Pakistan of harboring “terrorist” cells on its soil, pointing the finger in particular at the regional branch of Daesh.
“Pakistan expects the Afghan government to assume its responsibilities,” the army said at the beginning of March, reserving “the right to take the necessary measures to respond to these threats coming from across the border.”
Last year was the deadliest year in almost a decade in Pakistan, with more than 1,600 people killed in attacks — nearly half of them security forces personnel — according to the Islamabad-based Center for Research and Security Studies.