Pakistani politician wounded in blast

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A Pakistani politician was among four people wounded by a bomb which exploded on Wednesday in the key city of Peshawar, the gateway to the Khyber pass and Afghanistan, police said.

The politician, Aurangzeb Khan, is a member of an ethnic Pashtun-based party that is part of the ruling coalition and vehemently opposed to the Taliban and its Islamist allies.

Pakistani Taliban militants are battling an army offensive on their main stronghold on the Afghan border and have hit back with a series of bomb attacks. Peshawar has borne the brunt.

Khan was being driven along a road in Peshawar when the bomb exploded.

"He has been wounded but he is not serious. But his driver and a guard have been critically wounded," said Arbab Tahir, an official of Khan's Awami National Party (ANP).

Pakistan is a vital ally for the United States as it struggles to bring stability to Afghanistan in the face of rising violence, much of it carried out by militants based in lawless enclaves along the Pakistani side of their border.

Hundreds of people have been killed by a surge of Taliban bomb attacks since the army launched an offensive on their South Waziristan stronghold near the Afghan border in mid-October.

The army has captured most Pakistani Taliban bases in the rugged region but their leaders have slipped away. Some are believed to have taken refuge with Afghan Taliban allies, who are not fighting the Pakistani state.

Khan's brother, also an ANP politician, was killed in a bomb blast last year.

(Additional reporting by Augustine Anthony; Writing by Robert Birsel; Editing by Paul Tait)