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The deadliest attack in Pakistan's troubled election campaign killed 85 people at a rally in southwestern Baluchistan on Friday before the former prime minister's return to the country Nawaz Sharif.
Sharif should be taken by helicopter to the Federal Capital of Islamabad when he returns to Pakistan from London to face a 10-year prison sentence for corruption.
More than 100 people were injured in the suicide bombing at the election rally in the city of Mastung. The attack was the biggest attack in Pakistan for more than a year and the third election-related violence incident this week.
The arrival of Sharif in the city of Lahore was delayed until 20 hours. He will be accompanied by his daughter Mariam, sentenced to seven years in prison. The two were in London visiting the wife of Sharif, who is ill, when a Pakistani court found them guilty of corruption.
Sharif's son-in-law is serving a one-year prison sentence for the same indictment. Sharif should appeal his conviction and apply for bail.
Before his return, police swept Lahore, arresting dozens of his Pakistani Muslims. There were barbed wire on some roads leading to Lahore airport on Friday and roadside barricades ready to close the main boulevards if the crowds began to gather
A video message from his plane en route to Pakistan, Sharif said that he knew that he would be taken directly to the prison on his return.
Sharif was banned from participating in politics, and his brother Shahbaz Sharif now heads the Pakistan Muslim League and is campaigning for re-election on July 25
. In a televised call to London supporters this week, Sharif said he was not afraid of prison and asked people to vote for his party. He also criticized the powerful Pakistani army, which led the country directly or indirectly for most of its sixty-one years, claiming that Pakistan now had a "state-over-state." "
and his efforts in the fight against extremists.
Pakistani and international defense groups have accused the military of trying to maintain their influence over Pakistani politics by preventing Sharif from taking power. The army denied these accusations and said that his badistance had been requested by the Pakistan Election Commission. The army will deploy 350,000 security guards to polling stations on election day.
Hours before the Mastung attack, four people were killed in a bomb attack against a senior political official of an Islamist party. No one claimed responsibility for the bombings, but they came a few days after a suicide bomber sent by the Pakistani Taliban killed secular politician Haroon Ahmed Bilour and 20 others at his rally in the city. from Peshawar, in the northwest of the country.
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