UPDATE 3 - Blasts targeting election rallies kill 38 in Pakistan

By Aamir Latif

KARACHI, Pakistan (AA) - At least 38 people were killed and over 80 others injured in two separate blasts targeting election rallies in southwest and northwest Pakistan on Friday, officials and local media reported.

A suspected suicide bomber detonated himself in an election rally in remote Mastung district of mineral-rich Balochistan province, killing at least 33 people and injured over 50, state-run Pakistan Television reported.

The dead included a candidate from Mastung, Siraj Raisani, a brother of the former Chief Minister Balochistan Nawab Aslam Raisani.

Raisani, who was critically injured in the blast, had been shifted to the hospital in provincial capital Quetta but he could not survive, his brother and a former parliamentarian Haji Lashkari Raisani told reporters.

Police were not sure about the nature of the explosion however some local channels quoted eyewitnesses terming the incident as an “act of a suicide bomber”.

Earlier in the day, a suspected suicide bomber rammed his explosive-laden motorbike into a vehicle minutes after the end of an election rally in the remote Bannu district, bordering the restive North Waziristan tribal region, killing five people and injuring another 30.

Senior politician Akram Khan Durrani, a candidate of the five-party religious alliance Muttehida Majlis Amal (MMA), was an apparent target of the attack but escaped unscathed, local broadcaster ARY News reported.

Durrani, a former chief minister of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhawa province, is running against Imran Khan, a popular former cricket star, in Bannu.

Durrani told ARY News that he was not at the venue when the blast occurred.

This was the second attack on MMA candidates in Bannu in the last two weeks.

The latest bombings followed a suicide blast at an election rally earlier this week in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhawa’s capital, that killed 21 people, including a candidate.

The Pakistani Taliban's mother coalition, Tehrik-e-Taliban-Pakistan, had claimed responsibility for the Peshawar attack.

Pakistan’s elections are scheduled for July 25.