MULTAN, Pakistan (AFP) — Pakistani police Tuesday said a Shiite lawmaker whose house was targeted in a suicide attack had earlier received threats from a sectarian militant group linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
The death toll from the bombing in the remote town of Bhakkar in central Punjab province on Monday rose to 19 overnight, while 60 people were injured including minority Shiite Muslim MP Rashid Akbar Nowani.
"It appears to be a sectarian attack, because the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is active in the neighbouring Dera Ismail Khan district," senior police officer Iqbal Mahmood told AFP.
"Four police guards were on security duty with the Nowani family at the time of the blast because they had received threats from the same group previously," Mahmood said.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Army of Jhangvi, named after a dead Pakistani hardliner) is one of Pakistan's most feared Islamist extremist groups.
It has been accused of killing hundreds of Shiites -- many of them in adjoining Dera Ismail Khan district -- as well as providing logistical support in several major attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.
More recently, Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who was accused of masterminding the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, has actively been sponsoring Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, security officials said.
Many of the sectarian outfit's senior members are being sheltered in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan, Mehsud's stronghold on the Afghan border, they said.
Pakistan's new civilian government is struggling to contain a wave of militant violence blamed on Mehsud's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taliban (Pakistan Taliban Movement) and Al-Qaeda militants based in the tribal zones.
Hospital officials said one more person had died overnight after the bombing at the legislator's house. Ten injured people were in a serious condition, local hospital doctor Chaudhry Ahsan-ul-Haq told AFP.
The attack happened when a suicide bomber detonated explosives in a crowd of people who had gone to greet Nowani, an influential local politician from the party of former premier Nawaz Sharif.
"I was only about six feet (1.82 metres) away when the blast took place," Nowani told a local television station.
"When I regained my senses, there were dead and injured people everywhere. I survived with pellet wounds in my legs and a fractured hand."
The MP said the victims were mostly poor people from his constituency.
About 100 Shiite youths chanting slogans against the bombing staged a protest rally in the central city of Multan late Monday demanding "protection" for members of the minority community, officials said.
The attack on Nowani was the third on Pakistani politicians in less than a week.
An influential Pashtun politician, Asfandyar Wali Khan, survived a suicide attack on Thursday. On Sunday the family house of chief minister of troubled North West Frontier Province Amir Haider Hoti came under rocket attack.
Hoti was not in the house at the time of the attack.
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