At least 10 people were killed and 25 others injured when a suicide bomber blew himself up at a Shia congregation hall in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar on Thursday.

The attacker, a youth aged about 18 years who was clad in black, detonated his explosives at the entrance of the Mirza Kasim Imambargah at Kohati in the congested old quarters of Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, at 6.55 pm (local time).

A large number of people were present in the hall for ceremonies associated with the Islamic month of Muharram, which is particularly sacred for Shias.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said in Islamabad that the suicide bomber blew himself up at the gate of the Imambargah when he was stopped by security personnel who were frisking all persons entering the hall.

However, eyewitnesses said the attacker managed to get to the entrance of the hall and opened fire with a handgun while trying to approach the 'Zaaqir' or preacher. He then blew himself up.

Among the dead were the 'Mutawalli' or caretaker of the Imambargah and a policeman. The injured included five children, three women and two lady police constables who were deployed at the Imambargah as part of special security arrangements for Muharram, a period marked by sectarian tensions in the past.

Several bodies were taken to the nearby Lady Reading Hospital. Local people took out a procession to protest the police's alleged failure to prevent the attack.

Kohati is a commercial area and was crowded at the time of the blast. The locality was immediately cordoned off by the police.

Cheema said a team from the Federal Investigation Agency had been sent to Peshawar to investigate the blast.

Authorities in Karachi, the capital of the southern Sindh province, sounded an alert immediately after the attack.

The blast, the latest in a series of suicide attacks across Pakistan, occurred on the seventh day of Muharram.

Last year too, there was a suicide attack on the seventh day of Muharram in the same area of Peshawar that killed 17 people, including senior police and civil officials.

The attack was also the latest in a string of bomb blasts targeting Pakistan's provincial capitals. Twenty-six people were killed in a suicide attack in Lahore [Images], the capital of Punjab province, on January 10 while a bomb hidden in a motorcycle killed 10 people in Karachi four days later.

President Pervez Musharraf [Images] and caretaker Prime Minister Mohammedmian Soomro strongly condemned the suicide attack. They said the perpetrators of this heinous crime were neither believers of any religion nor had any respect for human life.

"Islam is a faith of peace and harmony that despises violence, torture and killing of innocents," Musharraf said in a message. Soomro said the attack was an attempt to disrupt harmony and create instability.

The two leaders expressed the resolve to combat terrorism and vowed that such acts would not deter the government in confronting this menace. Soomro directed the provincial governments and law enforcement agencies to further strengthen security across the country.