Bomb Attack on Pakistan Lawmaker’s Convoy Kills Dozens<br />By SALMAN MASOODMAY 12, 2017<br />ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — At least 25 people were killed<br />and 30 others were wounded when the convoy of a senior Pakistani politician was hit by a bomb in southwestern Pakistan on Friday, officials said.<br />But Pakistani officials have generally been skeptical, saying<br />that local militant cells who swear allegiance to the Islamic State but have little or no operational link to the main group have been behind most of the attacks.<br />Amir Rana, a security analyst who is the director of Pak Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based<br />think tank, also took a skeptical view of the Islamic State’s claim of responsibility.<br />Mr. Haideri’s convoy was hit after Friday Prayer, and television news networks broadcast images<br />of his white sport utility vehicle charred and mangled from the force of the explosion.<br />This is the first attack believed to have targeted him,<br />but the party’s leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has survived at least three assassination attempts, most recently in 2014 in Quetta, the provincial capital.<br />He said that a breakaway faction of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned extremist Sunni group, was inspired by the Islamic State<br />and had been active in the area, and speculated that those militants might have been involved.
