No less than 13 persons have been killed with over 50 injured after a suicide bomber attacked a court in the northern Pakistani city of Mardan on Friday, police said.

The attacker went through the main gate leading to the district court, before throwing a hand grenade and detonating his suicide vest among the morning crowds, senior police official Ejaz Khan said.

A source who witnessed the incident disclosed that rescuers were picking their way through scattered human remains and blood-stained office equipment and files to collect survivors.

Speaking also, the president of the Mardan Bar Association, Amir Hussain, said he was in a room nearby when the bomb detonated.

“There was dust everywhere, and people were crying loud with pain,” he said, adding that “I started picking up the wounded and putting them in cars to take them to hospital. I did not know if the people I was rescuing were dead or alive.”

Lawyers were being targeted because they are “an important part of democracy, and these terrorists are opposed to democracy,” he said.

“Our morale is not dented. It is still high,” he added.

This is even as four suicide bombers targeted a Christian neighbourhood near Peshawar before being shot dead on Friday.

Both attacks took place in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and were claimed by Taliban faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar.