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As Reported by BBC News

A suicide bomb near Peshawar has killed seven people near a gathering mourning a cabinet minister’s son murdered in a suspected Taliban attack, police say.

About 20 people were also injured when the bomber struck on foot near the home of Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain in the town of Pabbi. Three policemen and four civilians died. The minister was not among the mourners.

The Taliban has told the BBC it killed his 28-year-old only son two days ago. The suicide bomber detonated his explosives near a mosque where people had gathered in mourning on Monday.

Police said the attacker was dropped off by a man on a motorcycle near the minister’s home in the town, 26km (16 miles) east of Peshawar.

“He [the bomber] was a young boy,” senior police officer Liaquat Ali told news agency Reuters.

“He was trying to cross the checkpost but when our policemen caught him, he exploded himself.”

Mian Iftikhar Hussain is considered the provincial government’s most outspoken critic of the Taliban militants who have carried out dozens of bombings in the area.

BBC Islamabad correspondent Ilyas Khan, whose hometown is Pabbi, says the minister and other VIPs were probably not the direct targets of this blast, as it was well known they were gathering at a college building several kilometres away.

Our correspondent says the militants may have been sending a message that they can reach Mr Hussain’s home should they choose.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban, Ehsabullah Ehsan, has told the BBC the group was responsible for gunning down the minister’s son, Rashid Hussain, near his home in Pabbi on Saturday.

The town is close to the home village of Pakistani-American Faisal Shahzad, who admitted to trying to blow up New York’s Times Square in May.

Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,500 people across Pakistan, it is estimated, since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.

Much of the violence has focused on north-west Pakistan’s border area with Afghanistan, where US and Nato troops are battling to turn around a nine-year war against the Taliban.