At least 14 people were killed and nearly 100 injured in election-related violence across Pakistan, officials said on Monday. Nine of the deaths came on election day itself while five died in a shooting on the eve of polling in the country's political hub Lahore, they said.
On Monday, six people died in shootings in Punjab between rival party supporters, officials said. Two others died in Sindh and one death was reported in Karak, NWFP.
A security official said about 100 people were injured in election violence on polling day. But interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said polling was generally peaceful and orderly except for sporadic incidents. Violence and fears of rigging overshadowed voting by millions of Pakistanis in critical elections in which the fate of key US ally President Pervez Musharraf hung in the balance.
In other unrest, a PML-N worker was shot dead by rivals outside a polling station in Sialkot on Monday, said party vice president Javed Hashmi. Six people were injured during a clash between supporters of Pakistan People's Party and Pakistan Muslim League-Q during voting, police said. Supporters of rival candidates fought with bamboo sticks in Ghotki, local police officer Aftab Halepoto told AFP by telephone.
And in Bajaur, a bomb blast ripped through a wall of a polling station while around 300 people queued to cast their votes, officials and witnesses said. No one was injured and polling resumed shortly afterwards, local government official Muwaz Khan Afridi told AFP.
"We are not afraid of death, because Allah has fixed the time of death and there is no escape from it, so we have come here to fulfil a national duty," 50-year-old voter Naemat Khan told AFP. A rocket-propelled grenade hit a polling station in a remote part of southern Sindh without causing casualties, a police official said.
A bomb blast was heard in Quetta's Nauroz Sports Complex area where several polling stations were located, while a small bomb exploded near a polling station on the city's outskirts, police and witnesses said.
There were no reports of casualties or damage. In Balochistan, two small bombs exploded separately near uncrowded polling stations, but there were no casualties, police said. Elsewhere in the province, tribal rebels blew up two pipelines supplying natural gas to a main plant in Sui early on Monday, officials said.
Sarbaz Baloch, a spokesman from a group calling itself the Baloch Republican Army, claimed responsibility for those attacks. The previously unknown group claimed responsibility on February 7 for a blast in Dera Murad Jamali, which a local official said killed two people.