A Pakistani Taliban suicide bomber rammed a car into a police truck in the southwestern city of Quetta on Wednesday, killing at least seven people, police said.
The attack killed five police officials and two passers-by on the outskirts of the city of Quetta, police chief Abdur Razzaq Cheema said. He said 22 people were wounded, eight of them critically.
Local politician Sarfraz Bugti told Reuters: "It was a suicide blast."
Bugti said the truck carrying the police officials was on its way to the city to drop them at their posts when the suicide bomber rammed into the vehicle. Television pictures showed the burnt wreckage of the vehicles.
The Pakistani Taliban, an umbrella organisation of various militant groups within Pakistan, and loosely allied to the Afghan Taliban, issued a statement claiming responsibility.
The Taliban, Sunni Islam militants and sectarian groups linked to al Qaeda and the Islamic State group also operate in the strategically important region, which borders Iran as well as Afghanistan.
Meanwhile, police said a counter-terrorism police officer was shot and killed in another part of Quetta as authorities were dealing with the suicide bombing.
A militant sectarian faction, the Lashkar-e-Jhangvi al-Almi, claimed responsibility for killing the counter-terrorism official, and for planting a roadside bomb in a northwestern region, that killed two soldiers.
Security officials said a remote-controlled bomb was set off as an army vehicle passed by.
