5 dead in Peshawar suicide blast.

At least five people were killed and 40 others injured in a suicide attack on a police station on the outskirts of Peshawar, capital of the North-West Frontier Province (NWFP), on Monday morning.

In the fifth suicide attack in eight days, the assailant detonated his explosives-packed vehicle in the Badbhera area at about 7.00am when children were going to school, a senior official said.

The bombing devastated a mosque, destroyed two rooms of a boys' college and brought down a wall of the police station, Peshawar District Coordination Officer (DCO) Sahibzada Anis told Pajhwok Afghan News. He said there were two suicide bombers in the pick-up laden with explosives. The attackers detonated their explosives as police signaled them to stop.

The target was a congested city neighbourhood, Anis added. He confirmed the blast killed five people and wounded 40 others.

The injured were taken to different hospitals of the city. An eyewitness, Saleem, said several houses and shops were destroyed by the explosion. Provincial Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain Shah, who strongly condemned the attack, said students also suffered casualties.

Shah asserted such cowardly acts would not deter the government from rooting out the scourge of terrorism. Militants have stepped up attacks in Pakistan since the military launched a massive crackdown on them in South Waziristan Agency, bordering Afghanistan, in mid-October. Police officer Karim Khan said 250 kilograms of explosives were used in the assault. "If the bombers had entered the city, dozens of people could have died," he said.

Over the past two months, 17 suicide attacks have been carried out in different parts of the Pakistan, most of them in the NWFP, killing more than 300 people and injuring hundreds others.

Police and residents rushed to the site immediately after the blast and carried out a rescue operation. Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani and Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti condemned the blast and ordered a thorough probe into the attack.

TV footage showed rescue workers searching for survivors amid a tangle of bricks and twisted metal.

The blast killed a horse attached to a wooden carriage and injured another nearby.

The dead bodies were pulled out of the rubble, state-run PTV reported, with the DCO saying the bomber came in a car from the direction of the Khyber Agency. "The car struck the wall between the police station and the mosque.

The mosque collapsed due to the blast and the police station was damaged."

Copyright Pajhwok Afghan News. All rights reserved.

Provided by Syndigate.info an Albawaba.com company