Suicide bomber kills 5 in Peshawar

The attacker targeted a police station at Badabher on the outskirts of the provincial capital at 7.45 am, local residents said. A mosque and a house located near the police station were reduced to rubble by the powerful blast, they said. Five bodies were pulled out of the rubble, state-run PTV reported. Witnesses and rescue service officials said 20 others were injured.

"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. A nearby market was also damaged," said Shahibzada Anees, the district administration chief. Police cordoned off the area as local residents and rescue workers removed the rubble by hand to pull out the dead and injured. Ambulances ferried the bodies and injured to hospitals, where an emergency was declared. Local residents said they feared more people could be buried in the rubble of the mosque.

A witness said he had seen schoolbags and text books lying at the site of the blast, though it could be ascertained if any children were among the casualties. This was the fifth terrorist attack in Peshawar and its surrounding areas in the past four days. An anti-Taliban mayor in Badabher area escaped an attempt on his life by burqa-clad militants on Sunday while 12 people were killed in a suicide car bomb attack on a police check post on the outskirts of the city on Saturday.

Two suicide car bombers struck ISI operational headquarters in Peshawar on Friday, killing 17 people while a Pakistani employee of the Iranian consulate in the city was gunned down a day earlier. Peshawar has been targeted by the militants after a military operation was launched last month in South Waziristan, considered the hub of the local Taliban. Except for a car bombing in a market in Peshawar that claimed nearly 120 lives, the Taliban have claimed responsibility for most of the attacks. North West Frontier Province Governor Owais Ghani and Chief Minister Ameer Haider Khan Hoti condemned today's attack.