The party of former Pakistani cricket hero Imran Khan secured victory in a repeat election held in one constituency of violence-plagued Karachi, election officials said Monday. Voting was held under tight security in 43 polling stations on Sunday, a day after a senior official of Khan's Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) party was shot dead outside her home in the city. Polling was re-run after complaints of ballot-stuffing in the upmarket district of the vast port city, Pakistan's economic engine, during the May 11 general election.

A Pakistani court Monday granted bail to former military ruler Pervez Musharraf over the murder of Benazir Bhutto, an official said, but the retired general remains under house arrest. Musharraf has been detained in his farmhouse on the edge of Islamabad since April 19 on charges of conspiracy to murder two-time prime minister Bhutto, who was assassinated in a gun and bomb attack in 2007 in Rawalpindi. "General Musharraf's bail has been confirmed" by an anti-terrorism court in the garrison town of Rawalpindi, next to Islamabad, court official Mohammad Aslam Joya told AFP.

Hundreds of people queued up at 43 polling stations in a constituency of Pakistan's port city of Karachi on Sunday where a re-vote had been ordered over allegations of ballot stuffing. The re-poll of an eligible 86,000 voters in a constituency known as NA-250, largely an affluent neighbourhood, started at 8:00 am (0300 GMT) under tight security involving army, police and paramilitary rangers, an AFP reporter said.

Twin bomb attacks on Friday killed at least 13 people outside mosques in northwest Pakistan, where the party of cricket star Imran Khan is forming a coalition government, officials said. The blasts targeted the two mosques in the Baazdara area of northwestern Malakand region, senior local administration official Amjad Ali Khan told AFP. "The two blasts killed at least 13 people and wounded 48 others," Khan said. "Eight of the injured people are in a critical condition," he added.