PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A suicide bomber struck a funeral on Tuesday in the city of Mardan in northern Pakistan, killing 28 mourners, including a provincial legislator, and injuring more than 60, a senior police officer said.
“It was terrible," said Jafar Khan, the deputy police inspector general in Mardan, about 40 miles northeast of Peshawar, capital of the volatile Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Province. “We had to make our way through piles of human flesh.”
The attack took place during the funeral of an influential businessman who had been killed just a day earlier in a feud, Mr. Khan said. The bomber detonated his suicide vest just after last rites had been performed, Mr. Khan said, sending shrapnel and ball bearings flying.
Among the dead was Imran Mohmand, a newly elected member of the provincial assembly who had been receiving threats, Mr. Khan said. “We had provided him with escort and had cautioned him against traveling too much,” Mr. Khan said.
Although Mr. Mohmand was elected as an independent, he had previously been associated with the secular Awami National Party, which has governed Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa since 2008 and whose politicians have been frequent targets of Taliban attacks.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack.
Some of the critically wounded were brought to Peshawar for treatment, Shaukat Yousafzai, the provincial information minister, said in an interview. “We condemn the bombing, whosoever is behind it,” Mr. Yousafzai said. “The bombing reinforces the call for a national policy to deal with the situation.” His party, Tehreek-e-Insaf, or the Movement for Justice, has called for negotiations with Pakistani militants.
Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told Parliament on Monday that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif would soon invite all political leaders to work out a national policy on terrorism.
He was speaking two days after Pakistan’s largest province, Baluchistan, was hit by the suicide bombing of a bus carrying female university students and an overnight attack on a hilltop residence once used by the founder of Pakistan, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
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