A bomb attack killed 10 people, including a provincial lawmaker, and wounded more than 40 others at a funeral in northwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, police said.
The attack took place in Shergarh town in Mardan district, 145 kilometres (90 miles) northwest of Islamabad, during funeral prayers for the owner of a local fuel station.
"At least 10 people, including provincial lawmaker Imran Khan Mohmand were killed and 46 others wounded in the bomb blast," local police chief Tahir Ayub told AFP.
Police could not immediately confirm the kind of bomb that had exploded.
Mohmand was elected to the provincial assembly in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province as an independent at elections last month.
Senior local police official Jaffer Khan also confirmed the blast and casualties.
But the precise target was not immediately clear. Officials described Mohmand as a close friend of the deceased CNG station owner.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is on the frontline of a seven-year Taliban insurgency and abuts the semi-autonomous tribal belt, where US drone strikes target Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives.
Washington considers the tribal areas a major hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
The blast highlights the security challenges facing the new government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, sworn in earlier this month after winning the May 11 general election.
The attack comes three days after 25 people died when militants blew up a bus carrying female students in the southwestern city of Quetta and stormed a hospital where survivors were taken for treatment.
Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani schoolgirl shot by the Taliban for promoting girls' education, denounced the attack on the Quetta bus as "cowardly".
Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, the UN special envoy for global education, said it was the "bloodiest atrocity yet in escalating violence against female students".
Malala was shot at point-blank range by a Taliban gunman as her school bus travelled through northwest Pakistan's Swat Valley on October 9 last year, in an attack that drew worldwide condemnation.
She was flown to Britain for surgery on her head injuries and returned to school in Birmingham, central England, in March.
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