Image:Al Jazeera

At least eight people, including the son of an influential Afghan cleric, have been killed and 45 others wounded after a suicide bomber rammed his motorcycle into a bus in Pakistan's northwestern city of Peshawar, police say.

Qari Hilal, the son of cleric Qazi Amin Waqad, died in Monday's suicide bombing which appeared to have targeted Sahibzada Anees, a senior official in the city administration.

He had passed by shortly before the blast in the Jehangir Abad neighbourhood.

Qazi Amin Waqad is a member of Afghanistan's High Peace Council, which is trying to draw the Afghan Taliban into peace talks.

Hilal was organising a conference of Afghan and Pakistani religious scholars to oppose militancy, Afghan consulate officials quoted by the Reuters news agency said.

The attack is the latest in a wave of violence that has rocked Pakistan ahead of national elections on May 11.
"At least eight people were killed and 45 others were wounded in the suicide bombing," Mohammad Faisal, a police official, told the AFP news agency.

"The commissioner, who passed just a minute before from the road, was the target of the bombing, but he escaped unhurt as the bomber missed the target and struck his motorcycle into a passenger bus."
Body parts of the suicide bomber were found at the blast site, he added.