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Suicide bomber kills lawmaker
A suicide bomber killed a provincial lawmaker on Tuesday as he received guests at his home in Pakistan's northwest Swat valley, where the military says it has quashed a Taliban uprising.
A suicide bomber killed a provincial lawmaker on Tuesday as he received guests at his home in Pakistan's northwest Swat valley, where the military says it has quashed a Taliban uprising.
A man with explosives strapped to his body walked unchallenged into the grounds of provincial assembly member Shamsher Ali Khan's house and blew himself up, killing the lawmaker and wounding 11 others, officials said.
The attack against a member of the Awami National Party, which dominates the North West Frontier Province (NWFP) assembly, came as Taliban insurgents stage a wave of bombings avenging a multi-pronged military offensive against them.
"Dr Shamsher Ali Khan was killed in the suicide attack," Swat police chief Qazi Ghulam Farooq told AFP. He earlier said that Khan's brother was also killed, but later added that he was in fact badly wounded.
Senior local police official Ali Khan said that the politician had been sitting on the lawn in front of his house receiving guests and local constituents when a man in his early 20s rushed up to him.
"His brother also rushed to save the lawmaker but the bomber blew himself up before he could be prevented," the police official said.
The attacker struck as guests gathered to mark the end of the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, and the force of the blast damaged parts of the house and grounds. Blood stains could be seen marking the building, witnesses said.
Spin Zada, a doctor at a local government hospital, confirmed that the bodies of Khan, 59, and the bomber were brought to the hospital.
Eleven others were wounded in the blast in Kanju town, about 30 kilometres (18 miles) northwest of Swat's main hub Mingora, he said.
Swat was the focus of a fierce military offensive launched earlier this year to rid the one-time tourist paradise of Taliban militants.
Officials in the ANP said that Khan -- a lawyer by profession -- had received death threats from the Taliban ahead of the military offensive.
Swat slipped out of government control in July 2007 after radical cleric Maulana Fazlullah mounted a violent campaign in which his followers beheaded opponents, burnt schools and fought to enforce Islamic sharia law.
The army launched an offensive in April and says at least 2,150 militants have been killed in Swat and neighbouring Buner and Lower Dir districts.
The military now says it has almost cleared the scenic valley of Islamist fighters, but sporadic attacks continue to plague the mountain region. Fazlullah remains at large, although a number of his aides are in custody.
Ten suspected militants were arrested in two search operations in the region in the past 24 hours, the army said in its daily briefing Tuesday.
Another military offensive is now raging in the semi-autonomous northwest tribal belt that runs along the Afghan border, with Islamabad vowing to hunt down the core leadership of the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Insurgents retaliated with a wave of suicide attacks killing more than 430 people in the past two months, although there had been a lull in recent weeks.
Security has drastically deteriorated in Pakistan since Islamabad joined the US-led "war on terror" and hundreds of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants fled into the tribal belt after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan.
Washington and London are, however, urging Pakistan to strive harder to eliminate Al-Qaeda-linked militants on its soil, who are known to slip over the border into Afghanistan and attack NATO and US troops stationed there.
