US commander on Pakistan tour
Visit comes as funerals are held for victims of suicide bombing in a frontier town.
Hamid Nawaz, the interior minister, linked the blast to a wave of other bombings blamed on al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters that have killed more than 70 people this year.
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The explosion struck a crowd in the town of Charsadda as they gathered to hear Afrasiab Khattak, leader of the Awami National party (ANP), speak.
Zahid Khan, an ANP spokesman, said the party thought that the attack was intended to delay or disrupt elections.
The ANP has announced a three-day period of mourning.
Elections scheduled for January were postponed after Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, was assassinated on December 27.
The government has blamed an al-Qaeda-linked tribal leader, Baitullah Mehsud, who is based in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, for Bhutto’s assassination and many of the other recent attacks across the country.
Mehsud, the most wanted man in Pakistan, has denied the charge.
Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Islamabad, said: “The big question is who carried out the attack and why, and why so close to what is being considered the country’s most crucial election in its history.”