The bomber killed his apparent target as he sipped tea with relatives at a car showroom near a bus terminal in the small town of Jandol in the district of Lower Dir, 200 kilometres (125 miles) from the capital Islamabad.

Pakistani troops fought what was widely considered a relatively successful offensive to expel the Taliban from the area nearly two years ago, but Monday's attack underscored the precarious state of security in the northwest.

The town is close to Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt on the Afghan border, which Washington calls Al-Qaeda's global headquarters and where local troops are under US pressure to widen the fight against Islamist militants.

Police said the bomber exploded himself on foot at a bus terminal close to the car showroom, where three people were among the dead and several vehicles were also damaged. The overall death toll had risen to eight by mid-afternoon.

"We have found the head of the bomber. He appears to be a teenager, a 15 to 16-year-old boy," said Dir district police chief Saleem Marwat.

"The death toll is eight as one more person died of his injuries," Doctor Mohammad Karim told AFP by telephone from the district hospital in Timargarah, the main town in Dir and about 28 kilometres southwest of the blast site.

Police said the target of the suicide attack was Mohammad Akbar, head of a lashkar, or tribal militia, set up by the government to fight Taliban militants.

Akbar, 55, had survived previous attempts on his life, but was in the show room run by his family members when the bomber hit.

"Malik Akbar died in the blast," Qazi Jamil ur-Rehman, the regional deputy inspector general of police said. "Apparently he was the target," he added.

Residents said local authorities declared a curfew and that the emergency response had been sluggish in the remote town.

"I was in a shop a few blocks away," Mohammad Irshad, a 30-year-old labourer, told AFP.

"I saw a young boy entering the car showroom where tribal elder Malik Akbar was having tea with his relatives. Soon there was a huge blast.

"The boy disappeared in the smoke that filled the area. His body parts were later seen littered near the show room," he said.

Local resident Israr Uddin said it took time for ambulances to arrive from nearby towns, so people used private cars to rush the wounded to Timargarah.

More than 4,200 people have been killed across Pakistan in attacks blamed on Taliban and other Islamist extremist networks, which are based in the tribal belt, since government troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in 2007.

Monday's bombing was the sixth in six days. On Sunday, two suicide bombers killed 50 people, unleashing carnage at a Sufi shrine in the central province of Punjab where hundreds had gathered for a religious ceremony.

That attack on the shrine of 13th century Sufi saint Ahmed Sultan, popularly known as Sakhi Sarwar, was the deadliest in Pakistan since a mosque bombing killed 68 people on November 5 in the northwest area of Darra Adam Khel.

Islamist militants in Muslim-majority Pakistan have increasingly targeted Sufi worshippers, who follow a mystical strain of Islam.

Police and security agencies are questioning a suspected accomplice arrested with a suicide jacket near the shrine and whom police said was wounded when a grenade exploded in his hand.

The suspect was identified as an Afghan refugee in his mid-teens from the militant fortress of North Waziristan, also in Pakistan's tribal belt.

The United States considers the area a haven for Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants who fled the 2001 US-led invasion of Afghanistan to regroup and launch attacks on foreign troops across the border.

US officials want Pakistan to launch a major offensive in North Waziristan, considered the bastion of groups fighting US-led troops in Afghanistan, but Pakistan says its military is overstretched elsewhere.

Since last Wednesday, 29 other people have been killed in suicide attacks targeting a tribal elder in Pakistan's southwestern province of Baluchistan and two assaults on an Islamic party chief in the northwest.

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