Pakistani politician survives bombing

KARACHI, Pakistan — A suicide bomber set off his explosives Monday while trying to force his way into an opposition politician's home in eastern Pakistan, killing at least 20 people and injuring more than 60 others during a holiday celebration.

The targeted lawmaker, Rasheed Akbar Niwani, who is a member of Pakistan's minority Shiite Muslim community, was injured but survived, police said. Hundreds of people were attending a party inside the compound to mark the end of the Islamic festival of Eid al-Fitr.

Niwani is affiliated with the party of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, which quit the coalition government in August in a dispute over the reinstatement of judges fired last year by former President Pervez Musharraf.

The suicide bombing, in the town of Bhakkar, was the third attack in a week aimed at a prominent Pakistani politician.

Last week, Asfandyar Wali Khan, leader of a secular party that competes with Islamic militants for support among ethnic Pashtuns, escaped injury in a suicide bombing at a gathering in his family compound in Pakistan's troubled northwest.

On Sunday, suspected insurgents fired rockets at the home of a senior provincial official in Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, where much of the recent violence has been centered.

It was unclear whether the attack against Niwani was motivated by sectarianism. Some militant groups regard the country's Shiite minority as a threat. A majority of Pakistanis are Sunni Muslims.

Pakistan has been suffering a plague of suicide attacks, which have killed about 1,200 people in the last year. Many think the stepped-up campaign of attacks has to do with the government's military moves against Islamic insurgents in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Pakistani lawmakers this week are to receive a closed-door briefing from senior policymakers and military officials about the government's strategy for confronting militants.

U.S. officials have expressed frustration over what they describe as Pakistan's failure to hunt down key Taliban and al-Qaida figures believed sheltering in the tribal areas. Over the past two months U.S. forces in Afghanistan have intensified airstrikes in the border zone, mainly carried out by unmanned Predator drones.

Pakistan's president of one month, Asif Ali Zardari, triggered an uproar when he suggested in an interview in The Wall Street Journal over the weekend that Pakistan had tacitly agreed to allow U.S. strikes on Pakistani soil.

"We have an understanding, in the sense that we're going after an enemy together," the newspaper quoted Zardari as saying. Zardari took over his party's leadership after the assassination last December of his wife, Benazir Bhutto.

U.S. strikes inside Pakistan are extremely unpopular with the public, and most politicians speak very guardedly on the subject.

Zardari aides said Monday that his remarks had been misconstrued. Information Minister Sherry Rehman issued a statement saying the government had not given any form of consent for U.S. or allied forces to carry out strikes inside Pakistan, and that Pakistan expected its sovereignty to be respected.

Afghan refugees

to be deported

KHAR, Pakistan — Pakistan ordered the deportation of about 50,000 Afghan refugees in an insurgency-wracked tribal region amid a major military offensive against al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

The government said it was expelling all Afghan refugees in the Bajur tribal region, alleging many of them have links to militant groups. Police in the town of Khar in Bajur arrested 25 Afghans and said they would soon be deported.

The Associated Press