A soldier stands next to the body of a suicide bomber in Peshawar December 4, 2007. A woman suicide bomber blew herself up near a military checkpost in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Tuesday, but caused no casualties among the troops, police said.

REUTERS/Ali Imam (PAKISTAN)

Female suicide bomber killed in Pakistan blast: police

Tue Dec 4, 5:01 AM ET

PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A burka clad female suicide bomber blew herself up at a checkpost in northwest Pakistan Tuesday, in the country's first such attack involving a woman, police said. There were no other casualties in the blast in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, which is near the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan where troops are battling Islamic militants, they said.

It happened in a high-security zone where intelligence services buildings and also a Christian convent school are located, provincial police chief Mohammad Sharif told AFP.

"This is the first suicide attack carried out by a woman in Pakistan. She was the single casualty," Sharif said.

Other officials also confirmed that the bomber was female."

The suicide bomber was a woman," senior police official Kadir Khan told AFP."

She came to the army checkpost, she was stopped but she blew herself up. No soldiers were injured in the blast.

"Military personnel and police cordoned off the area, an AFP reporter at the scene said. Shreds of a blue burka, a foot and pieces of flesh were lying on the road.

A security official at the scene said that the woman was thought to be an Afghan refugee aged about 40.

"She blew herself up. Nobody was injured or died," the official said.

Police earlier said the bombing was outside St Mary's convent school, one of Peshawar's top schools, and that it had killed one person.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

President Pervez Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in Pakistan on November 3, citing the need to curb a wave of Islamic militant violence in the northwest of the country.

Pakistani officials have previously said that militancy is thriving in giant refugee camps in the northwest and southwest where more than two million displaced Afghans are registered