NOWSHERA: A woman constable and a civilian were killed when a bomb exploded near the Nowshera district courts on Tuesday.

Ten people, five of them policemen, were injured.

According to sources, the bomb planted near the main entrance of the district and sessions courts went off when police stopped a van for routine checking. Constable Shazia and an unidentified passerby died on the spot.

The constable was checking women who were in the van when the blast took place.

The injured—head constable Raz Mohammad and constables Zulfiqar, Khushdil Khan, Kazim and Salim and civilians Munawar Khan, Shah Khalid, Mughal Wahid, Zahidul Islam and Mewa Gul—were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's Senior Minister Bashir Ahmad Bilour announced Rs3 million, a plot of land and job for a relative of Shazia in the police department.

He said Shazia was the first policewoman to lay down her life in the line of duty.

Information Minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain, Excise and Taxation Minister Liaquat Shabab and former federal minister Mian Muzaffar Shah expressed solidarity with relatives of the dead and the injured.

AFP adds: “It was a bomb blast. Two police constables including a policewoman were killed and six others were injured. There are two police officers among the injured,” said Qureish Khan, district police chief in Nowshera district.

The target of the attack was the district courts, Mr Khan said, adding that bomb disposal experts had informed him that a remote-controlled device was planted at the main gate of the district courts.

A doctor in Nowshera's main hospital said they had received two bodies and six injured.

There was no claim of responsibility, but Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants have been blamed for bombing civilian and government security targets across Pakistan that have killed more than 4,240 people.