Islamabad - A suicide bomber killed an anti-Taliban provincial lawmaker in Pakistan's restive Swat valley on Tuesday, police said. Shamsher Ali, a member of the regional assembly in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, of which Swat is a district, was meeting guests at his house in Kanju town when the attacker detonated his explosives.
Senior police officer Idrees Khan told reporters that the lawmaker was killed at the scene, while around a dozen more people were wounded. Khan said remains of the bomber suggested that he was in his teens.
Ali's brother was among four people critically injured in the bombing that took place when a crowd was exchanging greetings with the politician after the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha celebrated over the weekend.
Television footage showed pools of blood and other debris across the courtyard of the house, with a severely damaged car parked under a shed.
Ali belonged to the secular Awami National Party (ANP), which is running a coalition government in the troubled province. The party leaders openly condemn the Taliban and support the military operations to quell the insurgency.
ANP spokesman Zahid Hussain told Geo News television channel that the Islamist militants could not subdue the government through violence. "We will fight till the last terrorist remains," Hussain said.
The attack on Tuesday was the latest in a string of bombings against government, military and civilian targets which has killed more than 350 people since October.
It came three months after the last bombing in Swat, in which a suicide attacker killed 16 police recruits in the district's main town of Mingora on August 30.
The military had largely cleared the former tourist haven of Taliban rebels after launching a full-fledged offensive early May. The army claimed it killed more than 2,000 fighters and arrested hundreds more.
However, troops in the mountain district are still encountering pockets of resistance.
The United States has welcomed the Swat onslaught, as it believed that an earlier abortive move to rein in the rebels through a controversial peace deal was tantamount to "abdicating to the Taliban."
Washington has been pressing Pakistan to expand the anti-Taliban actions to the tribal badlands along the Afghan border.
In mid-October, Pakistani armed forces launched an offensive in the Taliban heartland of South Waziristan, which is described as a hub of global terrorism.
The army says it has killed more than 600 fighters and captured most of the militant towns. Casualty figures are hard to confirm independently.
US President Barack Obama is scheduled to announce a new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an expected increase in the number of American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani last week voiced the concern that the US troop surge might destabilize the situation in the country's south-western province of Balochistan.
Gilani stressed that Pakistan must be consulted before implementing the plan.
