PESHAWAR: Fighting between armed Sunni and Shiite groups in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 37 people and injured 25 others, a senior police officer from the region said Saturday.
\nThe overnight violence was the latest to rock Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and comes days after a deadly gun ambush killed 42 people.
\nShiite Muslims make up about 15 percent of the 240 million people in Sunni-majority Pakistan, which has a history of sectarian animosity between the communities.
\nAlthough the two groups generally live together peacefully, tensions remain, especially in Kurram.
\nThe station house police officer in Kurram, Saleem Shah, said armed men in Bagan and Bacha Kot torched shops, houses and government property.
\nIntense gunfire was ongoing between the Alizai and Bagan tribes in the Lower Kurram area.
\n\u201cEducational institutions in Kurram are closed due to the severe tension. Both sides are targeting each other with heavy and automatic weapons,\u201d said Shah.
\nVideos shared with The Associated Press showed a market engulfed by fire and orange flames piercing the night sky. Gunfire can also be heard.
\nThe location of Thursday\u2019s attack was also targeted by armed men, who marched on the area.
\nSurvivors of the gun ambush said assailants emerged from a vehicle and sprayed buses and cars with bullets. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the attack and police have not identified a motive.
\nDozens of people from the district\u2019s Sunni and Shiite communities have been killed since July, when a land dispute erupted in Kurram that later turned into general sectarian violence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PESHAWAR: Fighting between armed Sunni and Shiite groups in northwestern Pakistan killed at least 37 people and injured 25 others, a senior police officer from the region said Saturday. The overnight violence was the latest to rock Kurram, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and comes days after a deadly gun ambush killed 42 people. …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":73243,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73244,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73230\/revisions\/73244"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}