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PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AP) -- Investigators tried Sunday to identify a suicide bomber who attacked a political rally, as the toll from the blast rose to 28 dead and 52 injured, including Pakistan's top security official.

Interior Minister Aftab Khan Sherpao was left spattered in blood but only slightly injured in the attack Saturday in Charsadda, a town near his home village in North West Frontier Province.
There has been no claim of responsibility for the bombing, which took place just after Sherpao completed a speech to a rally of his political supporters.

Sherpao said on Sunday that he was the intended target of the attack, without naming any suspects. (Watch as the injured official gets hustled away from the bombing site )
But suspicion inevitably fell on Islamic militants who have repeatedly targeted top Pakistani officials, including President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, for supporting the U.S.-led war on terror.

"Yesterday's incident is open terrorism," Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said. "It is a challenge to stop terrorism, and we are fighting it with full commitment."

Hamid Karzai, the president of neighboring Afghanistan, sent a message of condolences and said long-suffering Afghans knew the hurt that Pakistanis were feeling.

Such attacks show the need for "strong cooperation between both countries to fight against terrorists and all those elements who try to bring instability to the region," Karzai's office said in a statement.

Karzai and Musharraf, who regularly accuse each other of failing to contain militancy, were to hold rare face-to-face talks Sunday in Turkey.

"The attack was carried out to target me," Sherpao told reporters Sunday in a hospital in Peshawar where he visited wounded victims of the weekend bombing.

Sherpao did not blame anyone for involvement, saying only that investigations are going on.
"Terrorism is a problem for the entire nation. The entire nation should unite in jihad (holy war) against terrorism," he said.

Mudassir Khan, a police officer in Charsadda, said police and intelligence experts were combing the scene of the bombing for evidence.

A senior police investigator in Peshawar, the provincial capital, said that the bomber's severed head and legs indicated he was in his 30s. His fair complexion suggested he was from Pakistan's border areas or Afghanistan, the investigator said.

"The pattern of recent attacks" also suggested a link to the tribal region along the border, where al-Qaida and Taliban militants are believed to operate, he added.

The official, who asked for anonymity because he was not authorized to make media comments, declined to elaborate.

Durrani said it was unclear whether the bombing could be retaliation for a mysterious missile strike that killed four suspected militants in a village near the Afghan border on Friday.
Three suspected militants and a Pakistani soldier died in a clash on Sunday in the same North Waziristan region, intelligence officials said.

Pakistan has suffered a spate of suicide bombings this year, including attacks on the military and police, and at a five-star hotel in the capital, Islamabad.

Officials blame militants, but have announced no clear results of their investigations.
Witnesses said Saturday's attacker got within 15 meters (yards) of Sherpao -- detonating the bomb among a crowd that had gathered around the minister as he headed for his car.
While officials initially said that 22 people were killed, by Sunday the toll had risen to 28 dead and 52 injured, Durrani said.

Police said most of victims were local people, but also included several of Sherpao's police bodyguards. They said they were struggling to identify several of the badly mutilated bodies.
Top officials have been targeted repeatedly since Pakistan became a Washington ally against al-Qaida in late 2001.

In December 2003, President Gen. Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped injury in two massive bombings 11 days apart in the garrison city of Rawalpindi. Some 17 other people were killed in the second bombing.

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