Pakistan suicide bomber kills 12

The blast also wounds a Pakistani politician and about 50 others in the town of Bhakkar in Punjab province.

A suicide bomber killed 12 people and wounded a Pakistani opposition politician today in the latest attack to underscore the threat posed by Taliban and al Qa'eda militants. The attacker blew himself up in a crowd of people at the house of Rashid Akbar Nowani, an MP from the party of former premier Nawaz Sharif, in the town of Bhakkar in Punjab province, police and hospital officials said. Pakistan's new civilian government is fighting a wave of violence blamed on militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan, and is also under intense US pressure to crack down on the extremists.

"It was a suicide attack, the head of the bomber has been recovered. At least 12 people were killed in the explosion," senior police officer Khadim Hussain said. "The bomber walked up to the MP's house and detonated himself in the midst of a crowd of party workers, supporters and relatives," Mr Hussain said. The provincial police chief Shaukat Javed also gave a death toll of 12. The MP was among at least 53 injured people brought to the local hospital, some of them in serious condition, the doctor Chaudhry Ahsan-ul-Haq said.

"Nowani was injured in his legs but he appears out of danger," the doctor said. "It is a crisis situation here." The politician's brother, Saeed Akbar, confirmed that his injuries were not life threatening. "His condition is not serious, he is all right," Mr Akbar said. The blast came just four days after a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside the house of a senior member of Pakistan's ruling coalition in a northwestern town, killing four people.

That politician, prominent anti-Taliban campaigner and Awami National Party leader Asfandyar Wali Khan, narrowly survived the attack when his bodyguard jumped on the bomber. Militants also fired rockets yesterday at the family house of the chief minister of troubled North-West Frontier Province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, but caused no casualties. The attacks have piled pressure on the president Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to combat the growing threat posed by militants.

Pakistan is still reeling from a suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20 which killed 60 people. Relations with key ally Washington are also in crisis amid a string of US incursions and missile strikes against extremist targets in the tribal zones on the Afghan frontier. The Pakistani government today scrambled to deny a US newspaper report that Mr Zardari had admitted the hugely unpopular missile strikes were part of a deal with the United States. "We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," the Wall Street Journal quoted Mr Zardari as saying when asked about the strikes. "He has never said that they (the strikes) were being done with our knowledge or permission," the information minister Sherry Rehman told state television when asked about the interview. "We have been saying that whenever there is some actionable intelligence with (US-led) coalition forces, they should share it with us," she said. She also specifically denied that Pakistan had given permission for a ground attack by US special forces on Sept 3 in which 15 Pakistanis were killed. * AFP