Press TV
May 4, 2013

A roadside bomb has wounded a Pakistani candidate running for the upcoming parliament election in northwestern Pakistan, officials say.

Raj Mohammad, a national assembly candidate from the Jamaat-e-Islami party, was injured on Saturday after his vehicle hit an Improvised Explosive Device (IED).

He was on his election campaign in the lower Orakzai Agency area of the restive northwestern tribal belt.

“Mohammad and his driver were injured in the attack and their vehicle was badly damaged,” AFP quoted Wali Mohammad, a local government official, as saying.

“The victims are out of danger and had no life threatening wounds,” he said.

In a separate incident, an election office of the cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party was attacked in Peshawar.

Police said that around five kilogram’s of explosives were planted outside a PTI area office and exploded in the early hours of the morning.

“The gate and a few chairs were damaged in the blast but nobody was hurt because office was empty at that time,” Khalid Mehmood, a senior police official, said.

On Friday, national assembly candidate Saddiq Zaman Khattak was shot dead along with his three-year-old son after praying in a mosque in the southern city of Karachi.

Khattak was a businessman and a candidate for the Awami National Party (ANP), the leading secular party in Pakistan’s ethnic Pashtun northwest. A party leader said he had previously received threats.

On April 28, six people died in a bomb attack targeting the office building of an election candidate in the town of Kohat in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan. The bombing was carried out outside the office of Noor Akbar Khan, an independent candidate from Orakzai Agency. Nearly two dozen people were also injured in the bomb attack.

Pakistan will hold its National Assembly elections on May 11. The National Assembly has a total of 342 members, of which 272 are elected by popular vote. The last National Assembly elections were held in February 2008.

Pakistan will also hold elections for 577 seats of the Provincial Assemblies on the same day.

On April 27, five people were killed and nearly 30 others were injured in three bombings in the southern port city of Karachi. Police said two bombs were planted near the office of the Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) in Qasba Colony area. The third attack targeted the office of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Lyari district.

A car bomb attack at a political meeting of the Awami National Party (ANP) in Karachi also killed over ten people and injured at least 40 others on April 26. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group claimed responsibility for the bombing.

The TTP militants previously announced that they would target the election rallies of Awami National Party, Pakistan People’s Party, and Muttahida Quami Movement.

MSH/HN

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