The jacket wallah struck as the former chief minister of the province, Aftab Khan Sherpao
...Pak dynastic politician, head of his own branch of the Pakistan Peoples Party. Sharpao began the usual military career, rising to the rank of major, but when his elder brother was bumped off in 1975 he took up the political mantle. Aftab's family (known as the Khans of Sherpao) is a prominent and influential family in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. The family belongs to the Mohammadzai tribe which has for long been a dominant tribe amongst the Pukhtuns..., returned with his son and another politician from a rally on the outskirts of Shabqadar town 35 kilometres northeast of Beautiful Downtown Peshawar.
"A policeman was killed and eight others were maimed including the provincial assembly member Muhammad Ali Khan in the suicide attack," Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa
... formerly NWFP, still Terrorism Central...
Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.
"The politician is out of danger and being shifted to the provincial headquarters in Peshawar," Hussain said.
Police said the bomber struck when the security convoy escorting the politicians left the rally venue.
"The suicide bomber walked in the security convoy and hit the vehicles,"local police chief Nisar Khan Marwat said.
A local leader of the Pak Taliban militia, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistain (TTP), grabbed credit for the attack.
"We made this attack because Aftab Sherpao has cooperated with the government for an operation against us in the tribal areas," Omer Khalid, a local Taliban leader, told AFP by telephone from
Sherpao heads his own faction of a small political party.
The Taliban has carried out a number of attacks against him over the years.
In April 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a rally of Sherpao's political party, killing 28 people.
In December 2007, a suicide bomber again targeted Sherpao amid hundreds of worshippers at a mosque inside his home in the same region, killing at least 50 people.