DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Sept 11: Eighteen people, four of them security personnel, were killed and 17 others suffered injuries when a teenaged boy detonated explosives wrapped around his body in a passenger pick-up near Bannu Chungi on Tuesday.

Officials said that police acting on information that a suicide bomber was travelling in a passenger pick-up going to Bahotar village, chased the vehicle and intercepted it near Bannu Chungi. As the policemen asked the boy to get off, he detonated the explosives wrapped, they added.

The explosion was so powerful that parts of victims’ bodies were thrown far and wide. A leg of the bomber was found near the vehicle.

Most of the victims were local people who were going to Bahotar from D.I. Khan. At least 13 passengers were killed on the spot.

Two policemen and two FC personnel were among the dead.

Hospital sources said at least 18 people were killed and 17 others, including four policemen, were injured.

DIG Haji Habibur Rehman of Dera Ismail Khan said that the bomber was 12 to 15 years old.

The officials said the suicide bomber had came to Dera Ismail Khan from Tank. They claimed that the pick-up was not the target of the bomber, but he blew himself when the police intercepted the vehicle.

Inayatullah, an official of the bomb disposal squad, who suffered injuries in the attack, said they had received information that the boy had explosives on him. “We wanted to arrest him and had no idea that he was a suicide bomber,” he told journalists from his hospital bed.

Constable Fazal told Dawn that the young bomber was wearing white shalwar-qameez and a cap. “We could tell from the bulge that he is wearing something around his body”, he said.

Eyewitnesses told this correspondent after intercepting the pick-up, police ordered the boy to get off the vehicle, but he refused and soon there was a big explosion and the smell of gunpowder filled the air. They said that most of the bodies were badly mutilated.

Police cordoned off the area after the explosion and started collecting samples of the bomb from the site.

The wounded and the bodies of the deceased were taken to the District Headquarters Hospital.

Security was beefed up in Dera Ismail Khan after the attack and additional forces were deployed across the city and at sensitive locations.

On July 15, a suicide bomber had attacked a police mobile, killing 26 people, including some policemen.