ISLAMABAD: More than 20 people were killed and many were seriously injured when a suicide bomber yesterday blew himself up in the compound of an opposition member of the National Assembly, Abdul Rasheed Lawani, belonging to Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N). Lawani was also injured in the attack in the afternoon.

A police officer of Bhakkar told Arab News telephonically “over 100 people were injured,” according to local hospital. There is only one hospital in Bhakkar, 260 km southwest of Islamabad. The attacker blew himself up in the crowd of people at the house of Lawani, 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 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 reporters. “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 reporters. He said dozens were hurt, including Lawani, who suffered leg injuries. “His condition is not serious, he is alright,” the politician’s brother, Saeed Akbar, told AFP.

Television pictures showed corpses wrapped in cloth and placed on rudimentary beds after the attack, while the blast left pieces of flesh stuck to a ceiling fan. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Officials said the MP may have been targeted because he is from the Shiite community and lives in an area where there have been frequent sectarian attacks blamed on Al-Qaeda and Taleban-linked Sunni militants.

Lawani has spoken out in parliament several times recently against growing sectarian violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. Deep in the central province of Punjab, Bhakkar is in an area where sectarian tensions have run high.

Several Sunni militant groups, such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, that regard Shiites as their enemy, also share a similar world view to Al-Qaeda and have forged links with Osama Bin Laden’s network. Bhakkar is close to Dera Ismail Khan, a town that is a gateway to the South Waziristan tribal region — a notorious sanctuary for Al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. Police cordoned off the site of the attack.

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-Taleban 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 extremists.

— With input from agencies