NGOs stop working in Battagram
*Move comes after attacks on SPO and CARE International officers
ISLAMABAD: Non-government organisations (NGOs) working in quake-affected Battagram district have suspended their relief operations after attacks on their workers.
On October 30, eight people were injured when an explosive device went off outside the office and residential compound of the Strengthening Participatory Organisation (SPO), a local NGO running health and education projects. “We’re not sure what happened,” Malik Shahbaz, SPO’s manager of emergency projects, said in Islamabad. “Most of our staff are now in hospital. We were not expecting the blast.”
Shahbaz said the SPO had received threats in the past, and only recently resumed its operations following an earlier suspension.
Also on October 30, a compound of CARE International was attacked with automatic gunfire, but no injuries were reported. CARE International Acting Country Director Daw Mohammad said, “We are suspending our operations for at least a week.”
“We have suspended our operations and evacuated staff,” Michael McGrath, country director of Save the Children US in the NWFP, was quoted as saying by the IRIN, a United Nations information unit.
He said all 95 staff members, both locals and foreigners, had been moved out of Battagram to the nearby town of Bana. “Virtually everyone is now out,” he said, referring to 15 other NGOs working in Battagram, many of whom have evacuated their staff to Mansehra.
McGrath said, “Put together, you have a very clear, definite pattern of a group within the community who wants NGOs out and who is willing to use violence to get rid of the NGOs. In those circumstances, we don’t want to be there at the moment.”
Source: Dawn
Date:11/2/2007
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