PESHAWAR, Pakistan - At least 16 people were killed and around 80 injured Saturday when a suicide attacker rammed his bomb-laden car into a security checkpost in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

Police officials said the incident happened after officers had signalled the attacker to stop.

"According to latest reports eight people were killed and dozens wounded," police officer Mohammad Ashraf told AFP.

"It was a bomb explosion. An explosive-laden vehicle blew up near the security checkpost. The force of the blast destroyed a nearby market, bringing the building down," Ashraf said.

Several police officials and residents are still buried under the debris and rescuers are trying to recover them.

Television pictures from the area showed a scene of devastation with the checkpost completely flattened.An AFP correspondent at the city's Lady Reading Hospital said dead bodies had arrived there with ambulances bringing in many more injured.

"We have received eight dead bodies and dozens of wounded," Doctor Khizar Hayat said. "The condition of many of the injured is critical."

Eyewitness Ibrahim Khan said the blast was so powerful that it had thrown people up in the air.

"It brought down a market and three other buildings adjoining it," he said, bleeding profusely from his left shoulder.

He said he was facing away from the market when he heard the blast but he had been hit by shrapnel.

"Some blunt things pierced into my shoulder and I fell on the ground," he added.

Police in Peshawar, the capital of North West Frontier Province, said they had sent teams to the area.

"It is is an act of terrorism," said police spokesman Riaz Ahmed.

"The explosion was so powerful that the post was completely destroyed and a couple of neighbouring buildings also caved in."

Pakistan has been hit by a rising tide of Islamic militancy in the past year.

The latest explosion happened on the same day as the country's lawmakers were electing a successor to former president Pervez Musharraf.

Musharraf had been a key ally of the United States in its efforts to combat militancy on the Pakistani border with Afghanistan, a region Washington says is being used as a launching pad for rebel attacks on coalition forces.

But Pakistan's fragile coalition government has been struggling to tackle the violence that has seen nearly 1,200 people killed in bombings and suicide attacks across the country in the past year.

The unrest has been attributed to a militants angry at former president Musharraf's support for the US.

The interior ministry last month announced that it was banning Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), the main militant group behind the violence and which has threatened more suicide attacks. - AFP/vm