A few months ago, villagers in a Pakistani town killed six Taliban fighters who had bound and killed local police; yesterday, the Taliban retaliated, targeting the town of Shalbandi with a suicide car bomb that killed more than 30. The explosion rocked a school that was holding a vote to choose a National Assembly representative, the New York Times reports.
“They singled out this village because it had clearly resisted and had expelled the Taliban by force,” said a top provincial official. The retaliation is not the first; the son of a village elder was recently kidnapped. The village elder responded by kidnapping the son of a neighboring Taliban member. "If they continue with the violence, we will take strong action against them, even at the cost of our lives,” said the provincial information minister.
(More Taliban stories.)