Child killed, nine injured in blast in Peshawar

A child was killed and nine persons injured on Thursday in a bomb blast on a residential area in northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar, hours after terrorists struck in Lahore and Kohat leaving 41 people dead.

The blast occurred in the Gulshan-e-Rehman colony on Kohat Road in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province.

A large number of employees of the NWFP government live in the colony. Officials at the Lady Reading Hospital said they had received the body of a child and added that nine persons were also injured in the blast.

An emergency was declared in all hospitals in the city. TV new channels beamed footage of a building whose walls were blown out by the powerful explosion, which was heard from several kilometres away.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack. The exact nature of the blast could not immediately be ascertained. The blast in Peshawar occurred hours after a suicide bomber targeted a police station at Kohat in NWFP and three groups of terrorists attacked a Federal Investigation Agency office and two police training centres in Lahore.

Thirty one people were killed in these attacks and security forces also gunned down 10 attackers in Lahore.