Agencies

Islamabad, Oct 9: A suicide car bomber blew up an anti-terrorist squad building at Islamabad's police headquarters on Thursday, partly demolishing the structure and wounding at least seven people, officials said.

The blast was so powerful that it ripped off the facade of the three-storey building in the Pakistani capital, exposing a collapsed staircase inside and leaving a pile of rubble and bricks, a correspondent said.

The attack happened despite a massive security deployment in Islamabad for a rare parliamentary intelligence briefing on Pakistan's bloody campaign against al-Qaida and Taliban militants near the Afghan border.

"A team of police commandos left the building minutes before and that led to confusion over the casualty toll, but now all of them are accounted for and we have seven injured," police inspector Ehsan Khan said.

Islamabad police chief Asghar Gardezi also confirmed that initial reports of eight dead were incorrect, and added: "We believe it was a suicide car bomber."

Emergency workers in orange jackets clambered over the debris to check for any people trapped inside, while dozens of police guarded the area. The blast left a large crater outside the building.

"The blast was so powerful that it broke the windows and doors of our house," said a resident who lives in the area, adding that people rushed to the police complex after the attack.

The bombing comes less than three weeks after a suicide truck bombing at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, one of the worst terror attacks in Pakistan's history, in which 60 people were killed.

Meanwhile, a roadside bomb exploded near a prison van and a school bus in northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, killing at least 10 people, a local mayor and a police official said.

Three school children, four policemen and three prisoners died in the remote-controlled blast in the Upper Dir district, near the troubled Swat Valley, where troops are battling Islamist militants, they said.

"The van was carrying prisoners to jail after court proceedings when the roadside remote-controlled bomb went off," local mayor Sahibzada Tariqullah said, confirming the deaths of the policemen and the prisoners.

Senior police official Khurshid Khan said the three children were killed as their school bus was driving past at the time of the blast.