A bomb blast ripped through a bus on Friday, killing at least 18 people, including six women and a child, on the outskirts of Pakistan’s city of Peshawar, police said.

More than 40 other people were wounded in the attack on a bus rented by the government to take staff home after work in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The explosion went off in the Daudzai area, killing government employees and other private passengers riding the same bus, officials said.

"The bomb was planted under the bus," provincial information minister Mian Iftikhar Hussain told reporters.

"We still can't say how many government employees and private passengers were killed, but there were heavy human losses," he added.

Police official Tahir Ayub told AFP that 18 people, including six women and a girl, were killed and more than 40 wounded.

The attack came one day after a remote-controlled bomb killed at least 15 people outside a madrassa in Quetta.

Source: The Nation.pk