Seven people have been killed and 10 others wounded in a suspected suicide bomb attack on on the constituency office of a Pakistani MP in apparent retaliation against the country’s ongoing crackdown on Islamist militancy.
The blast on Wednesday ripped through a building opposite the home of Sardar Amjad Farooq Khosa in Dera Ghazi Khan, where the MP said supporters and workers were waiting. It came at the start of the holy month of Muharram, a period in the Islamic calendar that has often been marred by terrorist attacks in the past.
“As per routine people were gathered in my hujra [a hall for holding meetings] to discuss their issues, when a powerful blast took place,” said Khosa, who is a member of the ruling faction of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N). “Many of my close political workers lost their lives in this attack, but it will not make us back down from our battle against terrorism.”
The MP was in Islamabad at the time of the bombing.
The country launched a campaign targeting the Pakistani Taliban and sectarian terrorist groups in June last year. Although it led to a sharp decline in overall violence some major plots have succeeded, including the killing in August of Shuja Khanzada, the home minister for Punjab, who was targeted by a bomber while he was meeting people in his constituency office.
Dera Ghazi Khan in southern Punjab has been a focus of activity by militant sectarian groups in the past.
Muharram, the period when Pakistan’s Shia minority hold public mourning processions, is a time of heightened risk.
Extremist Sunni groups regard the practice in which men flagellate themselves to the point of bleedings as blasphemous and processions have repeatedly been targeted by bombers in the past.
In a sign of growing official intolerance to such groups leading members of the extremist Sunni group Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat have been arrested in recent weeks whilst Malik Ishaq, a self-proclaimed killer of Shias, was gunned down by security forces in July.
Dozens of clerics have also been banned from entering major cities for fear they will try to incite mob violence.
