Suspected suicide bomber targeted a Pakistani senator outside an Islamic seminary in the southwest of the country on Friday, killing at least a dozen people and wounding scores more, police said.
The deputy chairman of Pakistan’s Senate, Maulana Haidari, was injured in the attack in the area of Mastung in Balochistan province, local police chief Sabir Khan told DPA.
The bomber hit Haidari’s car as the senator stepped out the seminary after attending a ceremony, Khan said.
It wasn’t clear how the bomber managed to approach the vehicle.
At least 12 people were killed in the bombing and more than two dozen with injuries were taken to the city’s main hospital, another police official Mohamed Akbar said.
The death toll might go up as some of the injured people were in critical condition, Akbar said.
Haidari belongs to the Jamiat Ulema Islam Islamic political party, which believes in the Deobandi version of Islam also being followed by the Taliban.
But its leaders often come under gun and bomb attacks.
Balochistan, which shares borders with both Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s most volatile province, with frequent terrorist, sectarian attacks and violence by nationalist rebels seeking liberation from the mainland.
(dpa/NAN)
