Seven persons were injured today when a bomb went off near the residence of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain in northwest Pakistan though he was not in the home at the time,the police said.
A group of labourers was engaged in some construction work near Iftikhar’s residence at Pabbi area of Nowshera district when the low-intensity bomb exploded.
Several labourers and passers-by were among the injured, who were taken to a nearby hospital. Rescue teams rushed to the site while a bomb disposal squad swept the area. The area was later declared clear by law enforcement officials. Iftikhar was in Peshawar, the provincial capital, at the time of the blast, the police said.
The minister, an outspoken critic of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, has received several death threats from the militants. The minister’s only son was gunned down by the Taliban in Pabbi in July 2010. Days later, a Taliban suicide bomber targeted Iftikhar’s home and killed nine persons.