PESHAWAR: A policemen was killed and a local lawmaker was among eight wounded on Saturday in a suicide attack in Charsadda, officials said.

The suicide bomber struck as the former chief minister of the province, Aftab Sherpao, returned with his son and another lawmaker from a rally on the outskirts of Shabqadar town 35 kilometres northeast of Peshawar.

“A policeman was killed and eight others were wounded including the provincial assembly member Muhammad Ali Khan in the suicide attack,” Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain said.

“The lawmaker is out of danger and being shifted to the provincial headquarters in Peshawar,” Hussain said.

Police said the bomber struck when the security convoy escorting the political leaders left the rally venue.

“The suicide bomber walked in the security convoy and hit the vehicles,”local police chief Nisar Khan Marwat said.

A local leader of the Pakistani Taliban militia, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), claimed responsibility for the attack.

“We made this attack because Aftab Sherpao has cooperated with the government for an operation against us in the tribal areas,” Omer Khalid, a local Taliban leader, told AFP by telephone from an undisclosed location..

Sherpao heads his own faction of a small political party.

The Taliban has carried out a number of attacks against him over the years.

In April 2007, a suicide bomber attacked a rally of Sherpao's political party, killing 28 people.

In December 2007, a suicide bomber again targeted Sherpao amid hundreds of worshippers at a mosque inside his home in the same region, killing at least 50 people.