Long-haired gunmen burst into the white stone building and killed four charity workers helping earthquake victims, then wrecked the office with grenades and set it on fire. Police came, but did not intervene.
In a tactic reminiscent of neighboring Afghanistan, Islamic militants are attacking aid groups in Pakistan's volatile northwest, and local authorities appear incapable -- or unwilling -- to stop them.
The threat has forced several foreign agencies to scale back assistance to survivors of the October 2005 earthquake that killed at least 78,000 people and left 3 million homeless -- risking the region's recovery from the worst natural disaster in the country's history.
The Feb. 25 attack on employees of Plan International, a British-based charity that focuses on helping children, was the worst in a series of threats and assaults on aid workers in the northern mountains where Taliban-style militants have expanded their reach in the past year.
Nearly a month later, menacing letters are still being sent to aid organizations. Although all four victims in Mansehra were Pakistani men, Islamic extremists despise the aid groups because they employ women and work for women's rights.
Local officials in Mansehra, who spoke on condition they not be identified for fear of retaliation, said letters from extremists distributed last Thursday and Friday also warned schools to make sure girls are covered from head to toe and to avoid coeducation.
The militants may also be trying to discredit Pakistan's central government, and to enforce a radical religious agenda in a conservative region where jihadist-linked groups were themselves a source of aid after the quake.
Police accuse a local militant, Mohiuddin Shakir, who goes by the alias Mujahid, of masterminding the attack last month on the aid office in Mansehra. He has not been arrested.
Shakir, a former member of an al-Qaeda-linked group, has criminal charges against him in Pakistan dating back to 2002, including for murder, police records show.
Shakir now leads a jihadist group called Lashkar-e-Ababeel.
Last summer, Shakir wrote a letter to newspapers warning international aid groups about hiring women and warning women to wear an all-encompassing veil.
Yet Abdul Ershad, an officer investigating the attack, said that as recently as late last year, Shakir had a working arrangement with police in his hometown of Phulra not far from Mansehra. To advance his agenda, he would tell police about residents involved in "un-Islamic" activities -- like men selling pornographic videos and socializing with women -- and police would arrest them, Ershad said.
Brigadier Waqas Iqbal Raja, the chief security official for the Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Agency, acknowledged a growing presence of extremists in the quake zone, including some militants displaced by an army offensive against supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in neighboring Swat district.
Tribal elders have promised to help protect aid workers, and Raja said he has advised the workers to keep a low profile and stay off the roads at night.
He could not explain why Shakir was still at large.
"I wouldn't want to comment why he is still free. But there were definitely some lapses in police procedure and protection," Raja said.
Distrustful residents did not alert police when six or seven militants with long hair and their faces hidden behind scarves descended in broad daylight on the Plan International compound. The militants ordered the security guard to leave.
Sajjad Mahmood, a clerk working next door, said police arrived after 30 minutes and just stood outside the gate while the assailants were inside. When the gunmen emerged, police did not try to stop them, he said.
Since the attack, aid organizations have withdrawn their female field workers. Authorities are asking them to move their offices into a gated community in Mansehra with its own police post.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to