MULTAN (Pakistan) - PAKISTANI police on Tuesday said a Shi'ite lawmaker whose house was targeted in a suicide attack had earlier received threats from a sectarian militant group linked to Al-Qaeda and the Taleban.

The death toll from the bombing in the remote town of Bhakkar in central Punjab province on Monday rose to 19 overnight, while 60 people were injured including minority Shi'ite Muslim MP Rashid Akbar Nowani.

'It appears to be a sectarian attack, because the Sunni militant group Lashkar-e-Jhangvi is active in the neighbouring Dera Ismail Khan district,' senior police officer Iqbal Mahmood told AFP.

'Four police guards were on security duty with the Nowani family at the time of the blast because they had received threats from the same group previously,' Mr Mahmood said.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (Army of Jhangvi, named after a dead Pakistani hardliner) is one of Pakistan's most feared Islamist extremist groups.

It has been accused of killing hundreds of Shi'ites - many of them in adjoining Dera Ismail Khan district - as well as providing logistical support in several major attacks by Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network.

More recently, Pakistani Taliban chief Baitullah Mehsud, who was accused of masterminding the assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, has actively been sponsoring Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, security officials said.

Many of the sectarian outfit's senior members are being sheltered in the lawless Pakistani tribal region of South Waziristan, Mehsud's stronghold on the Afghan border, they said.

Pakistan's new civilian government is struggling to contain a wave of militant violence blamed on Mehsud's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Taleban (Pakistan Taleban Movement) and Al-Qaeda militants based in the tribal zones.

Hospital officials said one more person had died overnight after the bombing at the legislator's house. Ten injured people were in a serious condition, local hospital doctor Chaudhry Ahsan-ul-Haq said. -- AFP