At least 30 people were killed in a suicide car bomb blast at a polling station in northwestern Pakistan today, during a by-election for a provincial assembly seat, police said.
"The death toll has reached to 30. It could rise further," Behraman Khan, head of the police station near the Buner town, where the blast took place, told Reuters by telephone. "It was a suicide attack."
Khan said the attacker, who was apparently alone, is believed to have driven the car, parked it in front of the school where the polling station was set up and detonated the explosives while polling was underway.
The attack is the latest in a string of blasts in a region where security forces are battling al Qaeda and Taliban-linked militants who have unleashed a wave of suicide and bomb attacks and target killings in response to operations against them.
Another police official said four children were among the dead and their bodies were mutilated beyond recognition. Khan said around a dozen people were wounded.
The school building where the polling station was set up collapsed after the blast.
The incident took place near Buner, a remote mountainous town in North West Frontier Province and near the Swat Valley where security forces have been fighting militants since last year.
Reuters