MARDAN: The four suicide bombers who stormed Peshawar's Christian Colony a day earlier were foreigners but it was yet to be ascertained which countries they belonged to, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan said on Saturday.

"We had intelligence alert about a possible militant attack in three to four areas in Peshawar," Nisar said during a press briefing in Mardan.

Terrorists struck Mardan and Peshawar on Friday, killing 14 people and injuring 49 in a day that could have ended with a higher number of deaths had four of the suicide bombers not been killed before they could set off their explosives.

"Pakistan’s security forces have won a difficult war but there is still more to be done to eradicate terrorism entirely," Nisar said, adding that "previously there were attacks every other day, now they happen in months".

However, the interior minister admitted that the security situation in the country is not entirely under control.

"We have yet to take financiers of terrorism to task," he said.

Nisar said Pakistan's war against terrorism was for its own survival. "To do politics on terrorist attacks is like putting the country's future at stake."

The attacks in Peshawar and Mardan happened barely a day after Director-General (DG) Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Asim Bajwa gave an exhaustive rundown of progress made against militants in the country's northwestern region in Operation Zarb-i-Azb which was launched in June 2014.