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Suicide blast at Pak MP's house kills 18

Rockets fired at another politician's home

AFP, Multan/ Peshawar
A suicide bomber killed 18 people and wounded a Pakistani opposition politician yesterday in the latest attack to underscore the threat posed by Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
The attacker blew himself up in a crowd of people at the house of Rashid Akbar Nowani, a minority Shia MP from the parry of former premier Nawaz Sharif, in the town of Bhakkar in Punjab province, police said.
Pakistan's new civilian government is fighting a wave of Islamist 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," senior police officer Khadim Hussain told AFP.
" fhe bomber walked up to the MP's house and detonated himself in the midst of a crowd of party workers, supporters and relatives," Hussain said.
Local police chief Iqbal Qureshi said the death toll had risen to 18.
Hospital officials said at least 60 people were hurt, including Nowani, who suffered leg injuries.
"His condition is not serious, he is alright." the politician's brother. Saeed Akbar, told AFP.
Television pictures showed corpses wrapped in cloth and placed on rudimentary beds after the attack, while the blast left pieces of flesh stuck to a ceiling fan.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
But officials said the MP may have been targeted because he is from the Shia Muslim community and lives in an area where there have been frequent sectarian attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda and Taliban-linked Sunni militants.
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, killingfourpeople.
That politician, prominent antiTaliban campaigner and Awami National Party leader Asfandyar Wali Khan, narrowly survived the attack when his bodyguard jumped on the bomber.
Militants also fired rockets on Sunday at the family house of the chief minister of troubled North
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to open a new office.
Wearing a hidden explosives vest, the assailant "embraced the former commander" before detonating, the rebel-affiliated TamilNet Web site reported, noting that Perera played a key role in evicting Tamils from northeastern villages in 1984 to settle ethnic Sinhalese there.
Perera was lauded as a war hero in Sri Lanka for his repeated confrontations with the rebels and his role in halting a major guerrilla advance in 2000 into the Jaflha peninsula, the cultural heartland of the country's minority Tamils.
But he was also, a critic of the government ol I’T^dentMjfflinda Rajapaksa and became a leader in recent months of the opposition United National Party. In August the retired officer won a seat in the northcentral provincial assembly.
The United National Party, meanwhile, accused the government of ignoring repeated requests for a stronger security detail for Perera an open critic of the way Colombo has conducted its military campaign against the rebels.
"The government must take full responsibility. They did not give him adequate security for political reasons," party official Tissa Attanayake said, without elaborating.
Just hours before the attack, a roadside bomb killed two civilians and wounded another in a village near Anuradhapura.
Rebel officials could not be reached for comment on either attack because communication Lines have been cut to guerrilla-dominated areas in the north.
Meanwhile, a former leader of Sri Lanka's Tamil Tiger rebels is due to enter parliament on the government benches, an official announcement showed Monday.
Vinayagamoorthy Muralitharan, also known as Colonel Karuna, will be sworn in on Tuesday to the 225-member parliament to fill the vacancy of a lawmaker who quit recently to contest local polls, the gazette notification said.
Karuna, who led an unprecedented split in theTamil Tiger movement in 2004, returned from Britain in July this year, after serving a brief jail term on immigration charges.
He became an embarrassment for Colombo after he alleged that he was given a false diplomatic passport by Sri Lankan authorities td travel to London.