PESHAWAR, Pakistan (Reuters) - A suicide bomber killed at least seven people Friday in an attack on police in the northwestern Pakistani town of Mardan.
Pakistan has seen a surge in militant violence, mainly in the northwest, since last year with security forces attacking militants in sanctuaries near the Afghan border and the militants responding with suicide bomb attacks.
Mardan police chief Akhtar Ali Shah said the attacker had detonated explosives as he was leaving his office with an escort.
Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister of North West Frontier Province, said eight people, including the bomber, had been killed and 25 wounded. A doctor at Mardan's main government hospital said nine people had been killed, three of them policemen.
A severed head, apparently that of the bomber, had been found, Shah said. Suicide bombers usually strap explosives to their bodies and their heads are cut off in the blast.
Mardan, 110 km (70 miles) northwest of Islamabad, is the gateway to the Bajaur region on the Afghan border where security forces have been fighting militants since August.
(Reporting by Zeeshan Haider and Alamgir Bitani; writing by Robert Birsel; editing by Roger Crabb)
