PESHAWAR: A car bomb tore through a packed market near a police station on Wednesday, killing nine people in the fifth attack in the city of Peshawar in less than a week, officials said.

The bomb was planted in a car, devastating shops and vehicles as civilians thronged the congested area at the start of the working day in the northwestern city.

“It was a timed bomb. The target was police. He parked the car here due to the rush,” senior police official Mohammad Ijaz Khan told reporters.

Peshawar's main Lady Reading Hospital said it had received nine dead after the attack, including three children and one woman.

“Children and women are among the injured as well,” hospital chief Abdul Hamid Afridi told AFP.

Peshawar city police chief Liaquat Ali Khan confirmed the toll and said more than 20 people were wounded. An AFP reporter saw 23 patients being treated in hospital, including six children aged four to 12.

Housewife Asmara Bibi was sitting in the back of a Datsun pick-up en route to a nearby village to visit relatives when the bomb exploded.

“A wave of flames hit me. It was so powerful, I thought I was in a furnace. My burqa also caught fire and I threw it away,” she said.

“My kids were also burnt and I cried for them. After that I don't remember what happened. When I came round in the hospital, my relatives told me they're injured but safe.”

Bomb disposal official Tanvir Ahmad told reporters that 40 to 45 kilograms of explosives were used.

“Four vehicles were destroyed and 16 shops were badly damaged. Some of them were completely destroyed,” he said.

On Monday, twin bomb attacks targeting police in Peshawar killed six people. The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide attack on a police patrol in which a teenage bomber killed five people on the city's outskirts.

On Saturday, a double truck bombing killed eight people near a tunnel connecting Peshawar to Kohat.