Three female education workers killed in Mansehra

MANSEHRA: Three female workers and a driver of a USAID-funded Project Rise International were killed by unidentified gunmen here at Kund Bangla area on Monday.

Local people suspect the involvement of militants in the occurrence which took place in the jurisdiction of Shinkiari police station. The incident took place at around 4.30 p.m near a deserted spot.

The deceased include a social mobilizer of the Rise International, Sadif Yar Mohammad of Shabkadar (Charsadda); an assistant education officer, Aujum Zab of Mansehra, who was attached with the NGO; another unidentified female worker and their driver Saifullah Khan, hailing from Pabbi (Nowshera).

They were on their way back to Mansehra from a mountainous Kund Bangla area of the District when some unknown assailants killed all of them by spraying their bodies with the bullets.

‘The team had gone there to mobilize the local community to send their children to schools,’ said Shahzad Ahmad, the project coordinator of Rise International which works in the field of education jointly with the education department in 18 union councils of Mansehra Tehsil.

He said that the NGO had not received threats from any quarter. He added that they had set up the Parent Teacher Associations at the village level and their female staff works for the female students of the community.

At the scene of occurrence the body of the driver was found at some distance from the vehicle in which the bodies of three female workers were laying in pool of blood.

‘The scene was gruesome. The bodies were in bad shape as the assailants had sprayed them with bullets,’ said an eye witness who had seen the bodies.

After getting information about the incident the Police reached there and shifted the bodies to Rural Health Centre, Shinkiari from where they were shifted to King Abdullah Teaching Hospital in Mansehra for autopsy. So far no one has claimed the responsibility for the occurrence.

The Mansehra district police officer Akhtar Hayyat Khan said that he was not in a position to say any thing about the incident. He added that after the post mortem and preliminary investigation he would be in a position to give some information about the occurrence.

On Feb 25, 2008, unidentified gunmen had attacked the office of another NGO, Plan International, and killed four of its staffers. Few days ago the police had defused an improvised explosive device aimed at targeting some CD centers here.

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