Bombs killed 17 people and wounded dozens more including an election candidate in Pakistan on Tuesday, raising to more than 100 the death toll from attacks on the campaign for Saturday’s polls.
The attacks took place in the northwestern town of Hangu, a flashpoint for violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, and in the northwestern district of Dir, where Pakistani troops crushed a Taliban-led insurgency in 2009.
The election will mark a democratic milestone in a country ruled for half its history by the military. It will be the first time that a civilian government has served a full term and handed over to another at the ballot box.
But the Pakistani Taliban has condemned the polls as un-Islamic and directly threatened the main parties in the outgoing ruling coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP).
Twelve people were killed and more than 40 injured at Hangu when a suicide bomber targeted election candidate Syed Janan, said Musarrat Qadeem, information minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Authorities gave different accounts of whether the bomber had been on foot or riding a motorcycle.
