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.