Four children and a man were killed on Tuesday as their school bus was ambushed in the outskirts of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

Four children and a man were killed on Tuesday as their school bus was ambushed in the outskirts of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.

The boys, aged nine to 14, were targeted in the Matani area close to Pakistan's northwestern tribal belt.
"Gunmen opened fire on a school van and also lobbed a rocket in Peshawar's suburb of Matani," senior police official Ejaz Khan told AFP news agency.

"The motive for the attack was not immediately clear, but the children studied at an elite English-language school.
We are checking why the bus was targeted," Khan added.

 Habib Khattak, a doctor at Peshawar's Lady Reading Hospital, said 18 wounded were admitted after the attack. Twelve of them were children, he said, with the others teachers and passers-by.