Pakistani funeral bomb kills 27

A suicide bomber has blown himself up in a crowd of hundreds of mourners attending a funeral in Pakistan, killing 27 people.

The blast was the deadliest attack in the region since May 11 national and regional elections installed a new government in the north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The carnage poses a challenge for cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, whose party won the provincial election there on a platform of negotiating with the Pakistani Taliban to bring an end to the years of fighting and attacks.

One of the injured, Azeem Khan, said a local cleric was leading the funeral prayers there was a deafening explosion. “People were running away for safety,” he said. “Mourners at the funeral were crying for help after the blast.”

The Pakistani military has been fighting to root out Pakistani Taliban and affiliated militants from the tribal areas, a region that borders Afghanistan. The militants have vowed to overthrow the government and have carried out a campaign of bombings and shootings, mostly in the north-west that have killed tens of thousands of civilians and security forces in recent years.

Mr Khan campaigned on an anti-American platform in which he blamed the CIA’s drone program and the war in Afghanistan for leading to much of the violence in Pakistan. He also favoured negotiations with the Pakistani Taliban instead of military operations against them, and many of his aides and supporters said the party would not allow Pakistan to be used to ferry supplies to and from Nato troops in Afghanistan.

Mr Khan insists that the only way to end the crisis is through negotiations, although critics say the militants in the past have used talks as a way to consolidate their strength, and then they go back to fighting. Even after thelatest bombing , a senior party leader said it would push ahead with its goal of peace talks.

“Our policy is clear, that we have been saying that we will hold a peace dialogue,” Shaukat Yousufzai, the minister of information in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. “As long we don’t bring all the stakeholders to the negotiating table, we can’t get rid of ... terrorism.”