Our Correspondent Bannu
After a week of a protest sit-in outside the Janikhel police station in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Bannu district, local tribesmen and relatives of four teenage boys whose bullet-riddled bodies were found last week began a protest march towards Islamabad on Sunday.
The tribesmen and relatives have been protesting the brutal killing of the four boys, aged between 13 to 17 years, whose bodies were found in a field on Sunday, for the last six days.
The boys had gone missing three weeks ago. The victims were identified as Ahmadullah, Mohammad Rahim, Razamullah, and Atifullah.
On Sunday around 10am, around 10,000 people from the Janikhel area of Bannu bordering South Waziristan started a long march to Islamabad along with the bodies of the slain boys, demanding action against anti-state elements.
Police blocked the main road in Bannu and stopped the protesters from marching for several hours before they were allowed to proceed on their path.
A video showed the protesters raising the slogans of “What do we want? Peace!”, “We want justice!” and “negligent state!”.
“In the start, the march was smooth and peaceful,” Lateef Wazir, a resident of Janikhel participating in the march said that upon reaching Toche Pull, they faced a blockade and resistance from the administration and police.