Pak’s Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province sets up special units to protect politicians

Pakistan's troubled KhyberPakhtunkhwa province has set up Joint Crisis Management Units (JCMU) to protect politicians, after a spate of terror attacks killed nearly 150 people, including 2 top political leaders ahead of the general elections in the country, a media report said on Sunday.

The National Counter Terrorism Authority has warned that some top politicians, including Pakistan Tehreek-eInsaf chief Imran Khan, can be attacked by terrorists during the campaign for the general elections, scheduled for July 25. The decision to set up JCMUs was taken on Saturday during a security coordination meeting here following a wave of deadly terror attacks targeting election rallies in Pakistan. "The JCMUs established at districts levels will serve as nerve centres for collecting intelligence reports, ensure security arrangements before and after election campaigns and at the same time generate coordinated response in case of any untoward incident," The Express Tribune said, citing a communique between the home ministry and police department. The communique read that not only the units at district levels, but sub-command posts of these units should be established at different parts of district in order to reduce the response time in case of emergency, the paper said.

"JCMU must have representatives from local armed forces' formation, police, levy, civil administration besides relief department (health, Rescue 1122)," it said.