International News | Roadside bomb kills former Pakistan minister

A bomb attack in northwest Pakistan killed a former minister on Sunday, officials said, keeping up pressure on a government struggling to contain a raging Taliban insurgency and stabilize the country.

A roadside bomb hit the car in which former provincial minister Ghani-ur-Rehman was travelling.

"The minister, his bodyguard and driver were killed," said Fazal Naeem, a police official in the town of Hangu, where the attack took place. A second bodyguard was also killed.

Rehman, a controversial former northwestern cabinet minister, and three other people were killed in the restive district of Hangu in an area with a history of Sunni and Shiite Muslim sectarian clashes.

The blast comes in an especially bloody week, including the suicide bombing of a volleyball game in a northwestern village where anti-Taliban militias were being formed. At least 98 people were killed.

In another attack, claimed by the Taliban, a suicide bomber blew himself up at a religious procession of thousands of Shiite Muslims in Karachi, Pakistan's biggest city.

The blast killed 43 people, triggering riots that destroyed hundreds of buildings in the commercial capital, an image that could discourage badly needed investment in infrastructure.