3 killed as electoral candidate is attacked in Sibi
Sarfraz Dombki survived bomb attack while one supporter and 2 attackers were killed.
QUETTA (AFP) - A roadside bomb exploded at an election rally in southwest Pakistan on Sunday killing two people, officials said as violence continued ahead of historic polls on Saturday.
The remote controlled bomb went off when Sarfraz Dombki, an independent candidate for a provincial assembly seat, was leading a rally in Sibi, 160 kilometres (100 miles) southeast of Baluchistan province s capital Quetta, senior administration official Aziz Jamali told AFP.
"The blast hit one of the cars in the convoy in which two of his guards were travelling. Both were fatally wounded," Jamali said.
He said Dombki s supporters spotted two men fleeing on a motorbike after the blast. "They opened fire and killed one and captured another who had been wounded in the firing," he said.
"Dombki was unhurt and no one else was wounded in the blast," his cousin Dostain Dombki, who is contesting for a national assembly seat, told AFP.
Police confirmed the incident saying that two hand grenades were recovered from the suspected attacker who had been arrested.
Pakistan will elect its new government for the next five years in polls on May 11.
The election of the national and four provincial assemblies will mark the first time a civilian government has completed a full term and handed over to another, in a country that has been ruled by the military for half its existence.
Campaigning has been marred by Taliban threats and attacks, which have killed 69 people since April 11, according to an AFP tally.
Three people were killed and 35 others wounded in twin bomb blasts near a local party office in the southern city of Karachi late Saturday.
The two bombs exploded within 20 minutes of each other near the office of the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) in its Azizabad stronghold, police said.
On Friday, national assembly candidate Sadiq Zaman Khattak was shot dead along with his three-year-old son after praying in a mosque in the city of Karachi.
Khattak was a candidate for the Awami National Party (ANP), the leading secular party in Pakistan s ethnic Pashtun northwest.
Earlier on Saturday a candidate running for parliament was injured when his vehicle hit a roadside bomb in the troubled northwest, officials 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.
