PESHAWAR: A car bomb exploded outside a police station in the northwest Pakistani city of Peshawar on Friday, killing at least seven people in the latest bloodshed in an unrelenting wave of terror that has hit the country.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility but suspicion fell on the Taliban, who have been blamed for two weeks of attacks that have killed more than 150 people across the country and appear aimed at forcing the government to abandon a planned offensive into the militants' stronghold along the Afghan border.

The blast Friday afternoon hit a building where criminals and militants are held for questioning in the main city in Pakistan's Taliban-riddled North West Frontier province. It also damaged a nearby mosque.

Television footage showed the upper part of the wall of the brick mosque shorn off. Security forces swarmed the area as ambulances arrived at the scene. A twisted chunk of metal on the ground was in flames, and a small white car's front section was destroyed. In nearby Lady Reading Hospital, rescue workers rushed wounded victims through the hallways on stretchers.

At least seven people were killed and several others wounded, said police official Bashir Khan.

On Thursday, a car bomb in Peshawar killed a small child at a housing complex for government employees.

The newest violence came a day after militants launched coordinated attacks on three law enforcement compounds in the country's second-largest city of Lahore, killing 19 people as well as the nine attackers.