ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — A powerful bomb Saturday killed at least 25 people at a rally being held by an opposition party in Pakistan’s turbulent northwest, according to witnesses and government officials.
The explosion in the city of Charsadda ripped through a crowd of supporters of the secular Awami Nationalist Party moments before the party’s provincial president arrived, witnesses said. It was unclear what caused the bombing; government officials said a suicide bomber was to blame.
With national elections only nine days away, the blast raised concerns about whether the government would postpone the vote in the troubled province, near the Afghan border. The region has been the site of repeated clashes between Taliban fighters and the Pakistani military, as well as suicide bombings.
Shortly after the blast, though, Pakistani government officials moved to allay fears that they might delay the vote, which was previously postponed after the Dec. 27 assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.
Lateef Afridi, a top official with the Awami Nationalist Party, said the party’s provincial president, Afrasiab Khattak, was on his way to the meeting when he received reports of the bombing. By the time Khattak arrived, dozens of dead and wounded littered the scene.
Afridi said he thought the rally was targeted by extremists operating in the region because the party is expected to claim a majority at the polls in the North-West Frontier province and to form an alliance with the Pakistan People’s Party, the opposition group that Bhutto had led before her death.
“We have condemned extremism and terrorism, so now we are under threat,” Afridi said.
Meanwhile in Islamabad, top Pakistani military officials met with their American counterparts to discuss ways to enhance U.S. military assistance to this nuclear-armed nation. Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military’s joint chiefs of staff, said he met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf and several Pakistani army generals to discuss continued cooperative efforts to tamp down the violence that has rocked Pakistan’s northwest.
