Week of Pakistan sectarian feuding kills 89

 
Sectarian gunfights between feuding communities in northwest Pakistan continued on Wednesday, a local government official said, as the death toll
from a week-long spate of violence rose to 89.

Pakistan is a Sunni-majority country, but Kurram district -- in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, near the border with Afghanistan -- has a large Shia population and the communities have clashed for decades.

The latest violence began last Thursday when two separate convoys of Shia Muslims travelling under police escort were ambushed, killing at least 43.
Provincial officials brokered a seven-day truce this weekend but it did not hold.

"There are still intermittent reports of gunfire from various areas," a local government official in Kurram district told AFP, asking not to be named.
The death toll of 89 over the past seven days includes two new fatalities from recent fighting, he said.

Local tribal elders are making renewed negotiations for a truce "and it is expected that the ceasefire will take effect either today or tomorrow," he added.
Police have regularly struggled to control violence in Kurram, which was part of the semi-autonomous Federally Administered Tribal Areas until it was merged with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in 2018.

Last month at least 16 people, including three women and two children, were killed in a sectarian clash in Kurram.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said 79 people had been killed between July and October in sectarian clashes.