Within days, Khan withdrew his son from the madrassa in which he had been enrolled since the age of 12 and moved his family from Kohat in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) to Lahore last year.

Today, Zarak, 16, needs to do little more than sit in his chair, flicking through TV channels, to bring a fond smile to his mother Rehma Bibi’s face. She is glad to simply have her oldest son at home and safe.

“They wanted to make him into a suicide bomber, but we got him away from the seminary school,” Rehma told the IRIN news service of the UN.

Over the past year, Pakistan has been struck by a wave of deadly attacks, including some 70 suicide bombings. At least 636 people, including 419 members of Pakistan’s security forces, were killed in the suicide blasts.

More suicide bombings in 2008 have already killed over 70 people. On February 11, a teenaged suicide bomber in the restive North Waziristan tribal area blew himself up near the convoy of an election candidate, killing 10 people.