ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 6 (UPI) -- A suicide attack on a police station in northwest Pakistan killed at least 19 people, including nine police officers and five schoolchildren, authorities said.
At least 46 people were injured in the attack Monday.
Police said a bomber rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into the wall of the Lakki Marwat station, destroying a portion of the station and several nearby buildings, including a hospital, Pakistan's Geo News reported.
About 45 police officers were at the station when the blast occurred, officials said.
Witnesses told Geo News school students and passersby were injured. Officials said recovery efforts to extract people from the rubble were under way.
The injured were taken to hospitals in Lakki Marwat and Peshawar, the capital of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, one of Pakistan's four provinces once known as the North-West Frontier province.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast, but officials said they suspect Taliban militants, believed to have been behind a number of suicide attacks countrywide during the past week, The New York Times reported.
"The militants are taking advantage of the flood situation," Mian Iftikhar Hussain, information minister for the provincial government, said Monday in reference to floods that have devastated the country. "They know that we are busy in the relief and rescue work."
