
At least 17 policemen have been injured in the blast
In the first incident, four police officers and a child were
killed when a remote-controlled bomb exploded near a police vehicle in
the Lahori Gate area.
Later, a woman suicide bomber killed herself and another woman, possibly her companion, by detonating her jacket.
She was trying to target the police checkpoint about 400m from the spot where the police vehicle was hit.
Militant attacks in Pakistan have risen sharply since May, when US commandos killed al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Since then, a paramilitary academy, a naval base, government
buildings, a police station and a US consulate convoy have been
attacked.
In the first attack on Thursday morning, the explosive device
was hidden in a handcart parked at the roadside and detonated remotely
when police approached, police officer Ijaz Khan told reporters.
Their vehicle was transporting over two dozen policemen from
Kotwali police station in the eastern part of the city to the Police
Lines near the city centre, he said.
The vehicle was wrecked in the blast and a group of schoolboys were at the site when the bomb exploded.
A 12-year-old boy was among those killed. At least 21 people, including 17 policemen, were injured in the blast.
In the second attack, police said the bomber appeared to be a
woman about 16 or 17 years old. Her clothes suggested she could have
been from the tribal region.
The other woman appeared to be over 50, they said.
The woman's explosives-laden jacket failed to detonate properly, reports said.
The BBC's M Ilyas Khan in Islamabad says the attacks are the
first in Peshawar in recent weeks, and come a day after a deadly drone
strike that killed at least 18 fighters of the Haqqani network in North
Waziristan.
Our correspondent says that it is only the second known
attack to have been carried out by a female suicide bomber in
north-western Pakistan.
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