AFP/Islamabad

At least seven people were killed in a suspected suicide bomb attack targeting the office of a local lawmaker in central Pakistan yesterday, police said.
The explosion took place at the office of Sardar Amjad Khosa, a member of the National Assembly, in Taunsa town near Dera Ghazi Khan city in the southern part of Punjab province.
Khosa, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (N), was not there when the attack occurred.  
“The explosion killed at least seven people and wounded two others,” police spokeswoman Nabeela Ghazanfar said.
She said the bodies of seven victims had been taken to a hospital, along with a mutilated corpse that police suspect may have been the bomber.
Senior local police official Salim Khan Niazi said the exact nature of the blast was not yet known, but “we suspect it was a suicide attack”.
“We are however waiting for the findings of the bomb disposal officials, who will let us know what kind of the explosion it was,” he said.
Hospital officials also confirmed the new toll.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but southern Punjab is said to be the home of the Punjabi Taliban faction of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which has has killed thousands of people in suicide, bomb and gun attacks.
In the past year Pakistani authorities have cracked down hard on the myriad insurgent groups that have plagued the country for a decade.  
The offensive intensified after Taliban gunmen slaughtered more than 150 people, most of them children, at a school in the northwest of the country in December.