The lone bomber blew himself up in the midst of a rally of the opposition Awami National Party (ANP) in Charsadda town in the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Provincial police chief Sharif Virk said that the severed head of the bomber had been found, and militants from the nearby Mohmand tribal region could have been responsible.

Pakistan votes for a new National Assembly and four provincial assemblies on February 18, and, while it is not a presidential election, President Pervez Musharraf’s future could be at stake if the polls result in a hostile parliament.

ANP is a secular, ethnic Pashtun party competing with Musharraf’s allies who were in charge of the central government and religious parties who have held power in NWFP. A party spokesman said ANP believed the attack was part of a plot to spoil or delay elections.

“This attack is carried out by the forces who want to subvert elections,” Zahid Khan, ANP’s top spokesman, said.
Pakistan’s lawless tribal regions are known as safe havens for al Qaeda and Taliban militants, who fled Afghanistan after US-led strikes following the September 11 attacks and took refuge with ethnic Pashtun tribes across the border.

Security forces have been battling militants in tribal areas since 2003, but after the army crushed a militant movement at Islamabad’s Red Mosque last July violence has escalated in towns and cities across Pakistan, particularly in the northwest.

Meanwhile, police said on Sunday they had arrested around 10 suspected militants belonging to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, an outlawed Sunni Muslim militant group linked to al Qaeda, in a raid on their hideout in the eastern city of Lahore. “We have recovered suicide jackets and other weapons from them.

They had planned to attack political and religious gatherings,” a senior police official said.