Wednesday 2nd January, 2013
• Five women among seven activists shot dead
• Militant suspected them of being US spies
• People held mass funeral for the dead
ISLAMABAD - Thousands of villagers Wednesday held a mass burial for seven health activists, five of them women, who were gunned down by militants, the latest in the series of persecution of aid workers in the terror-riven nation.
The dead were working at an immunisation centre where children are given anti-polio vaccination.
Militants in Pakistan oppose the vaccination campaigns because they accuse health workers of being US supporters. Militant also suspect that Muslim children are being sterilised in the garb of vaccination drive.
Mourners carried seven coffins on their shoulders as they marched through the Swabi town for mass burial.
Nobody has owned responsibility for the attack that took place in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa's Swabi district Tuesday.
But they suspected that Pakistani Taliban could be behind the strike, the pattern of which draws a striking resemblance with attacks of the dreaded militant group.
Taliban militants affiliated to the Al Qaeda global terror network have been attacking charity and aid workers across the country in recent weeks.
The attacks against humanitarian workers have invited a worldwide outrage as militants have in particular been targeting health workers in a country where medicare for impoverished people is one of the primary concerns of global charity works.
The police said two men on a motorbike followed a van taking the workers, who worked at private Pakistani aid group Support With Working Solution, home.
The van was intercepted near the village of Sher Afzal Banda where militants opened fire with assault rifles and killed seven of them.
"They opened fire and killed five females and two males," said Javed Akhtar, the group's executive director. "One child, aged 7 to 8 years, miraculously survived."
On Wednesday, mourning friends and relatives recalled the carnage and how they had forewarned their kin about the impending danger to their lives.
"I told her many times at home 'be careful as we are poor people and take care of yourself all the time,'" said Fazal Dad, whose daughter was among the dead. "And always in response she said: 'Father, if I am not guilty no one can harm me'," Dad was quoted as saying by Associated Press wire news service.
The attack comes days after nine people working on an anti-polio vaccination campaign were shot dead in a series of attacks that forced the United Nations to temporarily recall its staff from Pakistan.
The attacks following a campaign of intimidation has dealt a deadly blow to health campaigns in Pakistan, one of just three countries in the world in which polio remains endemic.
She said it was a decision made by both train officials and the passengers themselves to stay in their cabin.