At least 128 people killed in a suicide bombing

A suicide bombing killed at least 128 people at an election rally in Pakistan on Friday

. The attack took place in the midst of growing tensions around the return of deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif before the July 25 vote. The attack was the deadliest attack in Pakistan for more than three years and is the third election-related violence incident this week.

The Pakistani interim government launched a crackdown on political rallies. Mr. Sharif, who was ousted by the Supreme Court last year and sentenced in absentia a week ago, arrived in the country to rally his party before the general election.

Baluchistan's minister, Agha Omer Bangulzai, said the attack reached 128 people, with more than 150 wounded.

A senior police official, Qaim Lashari, said earlier that more than 1,000 people were present at the rally in the battered city of Mastung in Baluchistan province.

Islamist militants linked to the Taliban, al-Qaeda and Islamic state were operating in the province, which borders Iran as well as Afghanistan. He also has a Baluch ethnic insurgency fighting the central government.

The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, said the news agency Amaq. Among those killed during Friday's attack was Siraj Raisani, a candidate for the Baluchistan Provincial Assembly, whose brother Nawab Aslam Raisani had been chief minister of the province from 2008 to 2013.

"My brother, Siraj Raisani, was martyred," said Haji Lashkari Raisani, another brother who is also challenging the seat of a Baluchistan National Assembly

Earlier in the day, a bomb killed four people in the northern city of Bannu during the convoy of Akram Khan Durrani, an ally of the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) religious party. ). A suicide bomber blew himself up at a rally organized by an anti-Taliban political party in the city of Peshawar (north of the country), the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province killing 20 people including Haroon Bilour who hoped to win provincial seat

Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack

Bilour was part of the largely secular nationalist Awami Nationalist Nationalist Party, Pashtun Nationalist, which has long rivaled the Islamist parties for votes in Pashtun lands of Pakistan, along the border. with Afghanistan.

His father, ANP chief executive Bashir Bilour, was killed in a suicide bombing at the end of 2012, in the run-up to the last Pakistani elections. – Reuters