Saturday, May 11, 2013

Blasts in Karachi, Peshawar kill 11

A Taliban bomb attack targeting an election candidate killed at least 11 people and wounded 36 others in Pakistan s financial hub of Karachi as polls got under way Saturday, a doctor said. The bomb targeted a candidate seeking election to the Sindh provincial assembly for the Awami National Party (ANP). The target, Amanullah Mehsud, escaped unhurt, senior police official Mazhar Nawaz said. Another police official, Tahir Naveed, confirmed the attack. The election marks the first democratic transition of power in the nuclear-armed state but the run-up to the polls has been marred by attacks that have killed at least 130 people since mid-April, according to an AFP toll. Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan claimed responsibility. "We proudly claim responsibility for this attack, we carried it out and will carry out more of the same," Ehsan said of the first deadly attack on polling day. Meanwhile, a blast near a school, which was designated as a polling station, on Peshawar’s Charsadda road injured 12 persons. Rescue and security forces rushed to the site on incident. Moreover another blast was reported near a mosque on Kohat road in Sheikh Muhammaddi Badaber area in the suburbs of Peshawar. No human injury was reported in the incident. Polling was also suspended in Mardan’s Bari Chum after an aerial firing incident near a polling station in NA-11 constituency. In Dera Murad Jamali, one person was shot dead while four others injured in a landmine explosion. Militants attacked polling station on Jamrud Bazaar of Khyber agency. Meanwhile, a rocket was fired near Gwadar Port. However, no loss of life was reported. A terror bid was foiled in Aliabad area of Hangu. Earlier, militants attacked a check post of FC personnel in Nushki while a rocket was fired on a polling station in Loralai. No loss of life was reported after the incidents. More than 600,000 security personnel are being deployed nationwide and around half the estimated 70,000 polling stations have been declared at risk of attack, many of them in insurgency-torn parts of Baluchistan province and the northwest.

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