PESHAWAR: A grenade attacked killed two policemen and wounded another one in northwestern Charsadda district on Tuesday, police said.

The incident happened in the Shabqadar area of Charsadda, 30 kilometres north of Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Two men riding a motorbike threw a hand grenade on a police vehicle patrolling the area, killing two policemen and wounding another one,” district police chief Shafiullah Khan told news agency AFP.

He said one of the policemen died on the spot and the second in hospital.

Another local police official Asghar Khan also confirmed the incident.

Spokesman of the Jamaatul Ahrar faction of the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan, Ehsanullah Ehsan claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued to local media in Peshawar.

Pakistan has been battling extremist militant groups in the northwest and its semi-autonomous tribal belt since 2004, after its army entered the tribal region to search for Al Qaeda fighters who had fled across the border following the US-led invasion of Afghanistan.

In June the army began a major offensive against militant hideouts in North Waziristan tribal agency, a major base for the TTP, after a bloody raid on Karachi Airport ended faltering peace talks between the government and the Taliban.