PESHAWAR: A senior bomb disposal officer was killed on Friday as he attempted to defuse a device in Pakistan's troubled northwestern city of Peshawar, police said.

Bomb squad veteran Hukam Khan, aged in his late 50s, successfully defused one device but was killed when a second one exploded as he tried to make it safe. Three police officers were wounded in the blast.

“The bomb planted at the roadside exploded when Hukam Khan was trying to defuse it,” Khurshid Khan, a senior police officer in Peshawar, the main town of the country's militant-plagued Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province told AFP.

An intelligence official said Khan defused the first improvised explosive device (IED) but was killed while attempting to defuse the second.

Pakistan's President Asif Ali Zardari on Tuesday told the UN General Assembly that the country has lost more than 7,000 Pakistani soldiers and policemen, and 37,000 civilians as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.