QUETTA A suicide bomber Monday killed at least five people and wounded seven others at a religious school in a remote town in Balochistan province, police said.

The bombing took place inside a madrassah, an Islamic school, in Kili Karbala village in Pishin district, some 50 kilometres north of Quetta, where a political gathering was to take place, it said.

`Five people have died in the suicide blast,` senior police official Akbar Raeesani told AFP.

Witness Haji Mohammad Aslam said the chief of the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) political party, Maulana Shirani, was due to address a gathering.

Aslam said Shirani is known for his opposition to Taliban militants, who are known to operate in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region.