PESHAWAR: Mortar bombs smashed through a house in a village in northwest of the country early Saturday, killing six people, security officials said.

The incident took place in Qambarabad village, a suburb of Peshawar close to the Khyber tribal district, where the military is fighting against local warlord Mangal Bagh and his Lashkar-i-Islam (Army of Islam) militant faction.

“Militants fired several mortar shells and two of them hit a house in Qambarabad close to Bara town, killing six people and wounding 12 others, all members of a same family,” a local security official told AFP.

It is not clear whether the house was the militants' intended target.

Another security official also confirmed the incident and casualties and said that the mortars were fired from an undisclosed location.

Khyber is part of Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, considered to be the world's premier al Qaeda hub despite the killing of Osama bin Laden by United States troops last year.