Pakistan suicide attack kills four

A suicide bomber blew himself up near a Pakistani police station in the northwest of the country on Tuesday, killing a child and three other people, officials said.

The attack occurred in the town of Bannu, which lies close to Pakistan's lawless tribal belt on the Afghan border, an area which Washington has branded Al-Qaeda's global headquarters and the most dangerous region on Earth.

"It was a suicide attack. The bomber came on foot and detonated himself near a police van close to a police station," said Bannu police chief Iftikhar Khan.

"The death toll is four. They include a nine-year-old child, one police official and two pedestrians. Eleven people were injured," Khan told AFP.

Officials had said initially that two people died.

"Our van was the target of the blast," police official Raza Khan told AFP.

Hospital official Nisar Khan also put the death toll at four.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants frequently bomb government security forces in the northwest.

Around 4,000 people have been killed in suicide and bomb attacks across Pakistan since government forces raided an extremist mosque in Islamabad in 2007. The attacks have been blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks.