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MULTAN, Pakistan: A suicide bomber killed 18 people and wounded a Pakistani opposition politician on Monday 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 Shiite MP from the party 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.
"The 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.
"We have received 18 bodies so far," chief of the local hospital Chaudhry Ahsan-ul-Haq told AFP.
He 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.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
But officials said the MP may have been targeted because he is from the Shiite 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, killing four people.
That politician, prominent anti-Taliban 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 West Frontier Province, Amir Haider Khan Hoti, but caused no casualties.
The attacks have piled pressure on President Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of slain ex-prime minister Benazir Bhutto, to combat the growing threat posed by Islamic extremists.
Pakistan is still reeling from a suicide attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on September 20 which killed 60 people. Officials say it was likely in revenge for military operations in the lawless northwestern tribal regions.
Relations with key ally Washington are also in crisis amid a string of US incursions and missile strikes against extremist targets on Pakistani soil.
The Pakistani government on Monday scrambled to deny a US newspaper report that Zardari had admitted the hugely unpopular missile strikes were part of a deal with the United States.
"We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," the Wall Street Journal quoted Zardari as saying when asked about the strikes.
"He (Zardari) has never said that they (the strikes) were being done with our knowledge or permission," Information Minister Sherry Rehman told state television when asked about the interview.
"We have been saying that whenever there is some actionable intelligence with (US-led) coalition forces, they should share it with us," she said.
She also specifically denied that Pakistan had given permission for a ground attack by US special forces on September 3 in which 15 Pakistanis were killed. - AFP/vm/de
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