A suicide bomber set off explosives in a vehicle at a security checkpoint in the northwest Pakistani town of Hangu today, killing at least nine people, officials said.
Pakistan has seen a wave of suicide attacks in the past three years, many in northwestern regions along the Afghan border where the Pakistan military is battling Taliban insurgents.
"Four policemen are among the dead . . . it also killed five people in cars driving past," police official Gul Jamal told Reuters. Seven women and four children were among 30 wounded.
The bomber used about 600kg of explosives. The blast destroyed three vehicles and severely damaged seven houses, a bomb disposal official said.
The army has launched a series of offensives over the past few years in Pakistan's northwest, which it says have weakened the Taliban. But the militants still strike back with bombs.
The military action is seen as crucial to efforts to bring stability to neighbouring Afghanistan, where US forces are leading the fight against the Afghan Taliban, who take refuge with Islamist comrades on the Pakistani side of the border.
Elsewhere, Pakistani newspapers warned the country is being swept towards violent chaos by a growing wave of Islamist extremism, after Taliban militants killed the country's only Christian government minister yesterday.
The assassination of Minister for Minorities Shahbaz Bhatti in broad daylight in the capital Islamabad threatens to further destabilise the nuclear-armed US ally where secular-minded politicians are imperilled by a rising strain of violent religious conservatism in the society.
"Mr. Bhatti's brutal assassination has once again highlighted the fact that we are fast turning into a violent society," the liberal Daily Times said in its editorial.
"This is not the time to be frightened into silence. It is time to implement the law and not surrender in front of extremists."
Mr Bhatti is the second senior official to be assassinated this year for challenging the country's controversial blasphemy law, which sanctions the death penalty for insulting Islam or its Prophet Mohammad. Punjab provincial governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by his own bodyguard in January for calling for curbing abuses in the law.
Reuters