September the deadliest month for Pakistan

PAKISTAN: During the month of September 493 persons died and 555 were injured in different incidents of violence

September turned out to be the deadliest month so far this year. The total number of casualties during September touched amounted to 1048 persons with 493 being killed and 555 injured; an increase of 35\% over the 744 casualties in August. More than 50\% of all the total casualties were killed or injured during the last nine days of the month (22 – 30 September) when 240 persons died and over 370 persons were injured throughout the country.

The statistics and report of the incidence of violence during the month was issued by the Center for Research and Security Studies (CRSS) and based on the research by Mohammad Nafees. The detailed report may be seen here.

Among all the provinces the death toll due to violence was the highest in Khyber Pakhtunkha (KPK) while the Sindh province recorded the second highest number of deaths followed by the Federally Administrated Tribal Area (FATA) and Balochistan province. From a figure of 84 persons that KPK and FATA recorded last month for the victims of violence (38 died and 46 injured), it jumped to 707 casualties (274 deaths and 429 injuries), eight times higher than those that occurred in the previous month. Violence-related incidents killed a total of 374 people in both Sindh and Balochistan province which was a marked decline of 40\% in such deaths compared to previous months. (See graph 2).

On the district level, Peshawar lost more lives than Karachi during the month in review, while Quetta, too, saw a far lower number of deaths in September. (See graph 3). A review of this change will be discussed in other chapters. Please see: PAKISTAN: During the last eight months 4,286 persons were killed in target killings, security operations, militant attacks and terrorism to access the data for the month of August 2013.

The majority of the victims were civilians. In September, two places of worship, a Church and a mosque or Imam Bargah for Shiite Muslims were attacked. The important pillars of the state, government officials (including army personnel, FC personnel, and policemen) and politicians (including activists and supporters) also saw 84 deaths, more than the militants and criminals together (73 deaths) during this month.

While most of the incidents of targeted killings happened in Karachi as usual, the Balochistan, KPK, FATA, and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) regions have borne the brunt of militant, sectarian and terrorist attacks.

Sindh province lost 149 persons to various acts of violence during September. A total of 138 were from Karachi and the remaining were from Kashmore (6), Sukkur (4), and Larkana (1) (Refer to graph 6). Nearly 70\% of the people were killed in target killings (106) and the remaining 30\% were victims of security operations, sectarian attacks, attacks by militants, gang wars, and terrorism.

To address the menace of these crimes, the government came out with a plan to convene an All Parties' Conference (APC) on 9th September 2013. Soon after the date of the APC was announced, a debate ensued among different political parties and opinion makers offering suggestions and evaluating the possibility of the effectiveness of such an endeavor that was attempted earlier and which had little or no results in the past.

All these events and other facts reported in the national newspapers are collected to make this report as informative and factual as possible. Errors and omissions, as always a possibility in all statistical works including this one and may be expected. However, such mistakes do not grossly affect the basic objective of this report which mainly covers the following topics:

Violence and APC resolution
Violence in Sindh
Violence in KPK and FATA
Violence in Balochistan
Drone attacks
The CRSS will appreciate receiving the comments of any readers of this report.
The attached report was prepared by:
Mohammad Nafees
Senior Research Fellow
Center for Research and Security Studies
Data compilation was by: Fariha Farry

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