PESHAWAR: A hand grenade attack on a school on the outskirts of Peshawar on Monday killed a six-year-old child and wounded two other children, police said.

Suspected militants threw a grenade from a lane behind the Iqra Public School in Khazana area which landed near children who were washing their hands at a water tap, senior police officer Tahir Ayub told AFP.

The privately run school teaches both boys and girls in religious and secular studies, residents said.

“Three children were wounded in the blast, one of them died on way to the hospital,” Ayub added.

“We received the body of a six-year-old child,” doctor Rahim Jan of the city's Lady Reading Hospital said.

The motive for the attack was not immediately clear, but hardline militants oppose secular and mixed gender schooling.

Peshawar, the main city of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the Afghan border is close to Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt.

Bombings blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked networks have killed more than 4,900 people since 2007.