Police are pursuing DNA tests to identify the suicide bomber who attacked a Shia MNA in Bhakkar on Monday, and officials said he had received threats from the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi sectarian group. "The Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is active in the neighbouring Dera Ismail Khan district," senior police officer Iqbal Mahmood told AFP."Four police guards were on security duty with PML-N's Rashid Akbar Niwani at the time of the blast because [the Niwani family] had received threats from the same group previously," he said.
Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has been accused of killing hundreds of Shias -- many of them in Dera Ismail Khan.
Many of the sectarian outfit's senior members are being sheltered in the nearby South Waziristan, the stronghold of Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud with Afghanistan in the northwest and Dera Ismail Khan in the southeast, security officials said. A spokesman for Mehsud issued a denial. "Tehreek-e-Taliban is not involved. It is the work of those powers who have formed a lashkar (tribal militia) in the cities to create a rift among Muslims," Waliur Rehman told Reuters by telephone.
Punjab police chief Shaukat Javed told Reuters the suicide bomber's head had been found. "He was around 30 years old and looks as if he was ethnic Pashtun from a tribal area. Probably he had links with militants there." An investigation team under the supervision of the Sargodha regional police officer has been formed to investigate the attack, the state-run APP reported.