Pakistan vows to hold polls despite violence

Pakistan's general election will go ahead as scheduled next Thursday, caretaker interior minister Gohar Ejaz said, after a meeting summoned by the election commission to discuss increasing pre-poll violence in the west of the country.

The panel had summoned top security officials yesterday to discuss the clashes in the provinces of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan after the killing of a candidate in a tribal district along the Afghan border a day earlier.

"There should be no doubts that the election will be on February 8," Ejaz said.

The US State Department has already expressed concern about the violence, which it said could undermine the electoral process.

Pakistan faces twin insurgencies - one in northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa by Islamist groups and one in the southwest by ethno-nationalist Baloch groups.

A national assembly candidate was shot dead on Wednesday in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. On the same day, another political leader was shot dead in his party's election office in Balochistan.

On Tuesday, a bomb attack following an election rally killed four people in Balochistan. Islamic State claimed responsibility.

Separatist Baloch militants, including three suicide bombers, also launched a massive coordinated attack on a town in Balochistan on Monday which took hours for security forces to clear. At least 15 people were killed.

Pakistan's Senate had earlier passed a non-binding resolution calling for a delay in the elections due to security reasons.

An anti-graft court jailed former prime minister Imran Khan for 14 years each on charges of illegally selling state gifts, his party said on Wednesday, a day after Khan was jailed for 10 years in state secrets case.

A detailed court judgment issued yesterday said Khan's leaking of the secret diplomatic cable hurt the South Asian nation economically, politically and diplomatically.