PESHAWAR: A suicide bomber killed at least nine people and wounded a candidate campaigning in northwest Pakistan yesterday, taking the death toll in the nation’s bloody election build-up to more than 100.
The latest attack in the town of Hangu, a flashpoint for violence between Sunnis and Shias, came a day after the deadliest bombing so far in the campaign for Saturday’s national and provincial polls.
Ishtiaq Ahmed, a senior police official, said that nine people had been killed and 40 wounded, though a senior civilian official in the district, Tahir Abbasi, said 10 had died.
Authorities said it was a suicide attack but presented different accounts over whether the bomber had been on foot or riding a motorcycle.
“He blew himself up near the vehicle of (parliamentary candidate) Syed Janan. He was injured but he is safe,” Abdul Hameed Khan, a senior government official in Hangu said.
The bombing raises to 101 the number of people killed in attacks on politicians and political parties since April 11, according to a tally.
Janan is seeking re-election to the assembly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province for the right-wing Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a religious party in the outgoing government coalition.
He said he had received injuries to his head and shoulder.
“I was on my election campaign and coming to my vehicle when the bomber blew himself up. I received some injuries but survived. Two of my guards were seriously wounded,” Janan said.
A joint rally for two other candidates from the same faction of the party was bombed in the tribal district of Kurram on Monday, killing 23 people in the deadliest single attack on the campaign so far.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility, saying the target had been Munir Orakzai, a lawmaker in the national assembly who was in 2008 elected as an independent but allied to the outgoing government.
The insurgents have condemned Saturday’s elections as unIslamic and directly threatened the main parties in the outgoing coalition, the Pakistan People’s Party, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the Awami National Party (ANP).
JUI-F and its leader, cleric Maulana Fazl-ur-Rehman, have been mediators between the authorities and the Taliban, blamed for killing thousands of Pakistanis in a domestic insurgency over the past six years.
Elections have been postponed in three constituencies where candidates have been killed. Those constituencies are in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, in Pakistan’s biggest city of Karachi and in southern Hyderabad.
The vote marks the first time that a civilian government in Pakistan has served a full-term in office and handed over to another at the ballot box. The nuclear-armed country has been ruled half its life by the military.
The race has been dominated by the centre-right — opposition leader Nawaz Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) and cricket star Imran Khan, looking to make a breakthrough for his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party.
AFP
