A bomb killed at least five people and wounded another 17 on Monday, targeting a public meeting attended by provincial ministers in volatile northwestern Pakistan.

A bomb killed at least five people and wounded another 17 on Monday, targeting a public meeting attended by provincial ministers in volatile northwestern Pakistan, police said.

The bomb went off soon after chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Amir Haider Hoti, and other ministers in his provincial cabinet had left the meeting in the town of Nowshera.

It was the third bomb in five days to hit the northwest, which in recent months had seen a decline in violence linked to a local Taliban insurgency directed against the government.

"The bomb was planted on a motorbike and the target was the meeting," local police chief Mohammad Hussein said.

The secular Awami National Party, which leads the provincial government, had called the meeting, attended by its senior members.

"The bomb carried about three to four kilograms of explosives, it was detonated using a remote-controlled device, attached near the fuel tank of the motorcycle, parked about 150 meters from the venue of the meeting," Hussein told media sources.

On Friday, three suicide bombers blew themselves up at a police station in the northwestern city of Peshawar, killing four officers a day after a car bombing killed 13 people at a bus station on the outskirts of Peshawar.

More than 530 bomb attacks have killed around 4,900 people across Pakistan since government troops in July 2007 stormed a mosque in Islamabad where extremists were holed up, provoking a local Taliban-led insurgency.