Lawmaker among 28 dead in blast near Mardan

ISLAMABAD (PAN’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP)province on Tuesday, officials said.

Another 57 people were injured as the blast ripped through the procession in Sher Garh area, about 20 kilometres from Mardan, the second largest city after Peshawar, police said.

Mardan’s deputy district police chief Jaffar Khan told reporters 15 people had succumbed to their wounds in hospital. Eleven other injured people had been shifted to Peshawar for further treatment.

Imran Khan Mohmand, a member of the provincial assembly, was among those killed, confirmed Shaukat Yousafzai, the provincial information minister.

Mohmand, a young politician, won the provincial assembly seat (KP-27) after parting ways with the former ruling party, Awami National Party, to contest the May 11 general elections as an independent candidate. He joined Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI), a youth-dominated political party, after winning the seat.  

A close aide of Maulana Fazlur Rahman, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl party chief, Maulana Mohammad Qasim, who led the funeral prayers, had survived the attack.

Mohmand is the second PTI lawmaker to be killed this month in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the party leads the ruling coalition government.  He was offering funeral prayers for Abdullah, a fuel station owner who had been killed a day earlier by unknown individuals.

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