PESHAWAR: At least five people were killed and 10 others injured in a blast at a playground in Kadda Bazaar area of Kalaya, the agency headquarters of the Lower Orakzai Agency on Sunday.

Official sources told Dawn that the blast occurred at Hussainia ground during a volleyball match. However, nature of the explosion could not be confirmed as yet. Political Tehsildar Khiasta Akbar said the blast appeared to be carried out through a planted device.

The political administration said that there was a match going on between Mani Khel and Farangi Kalley teams at the time of the explosion.

The incident appears to be an act of target killing with sectarian motives, they added.

Also read: One soldier killed, six injured during rocket attack in Orakzai

Orakzai is one of Pakistan’s seven semi-autonomous tribal regions in the northwest, where Pakistani Taliban and Al Qaeda-linked militants are said to have carved out strongholds.

It was a key abode of former Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) chief Hakimullah Mehsud before he was killed in a US drone strike in North Waziristan in 2013.

Pakistani military has intensified its operations against militants in the tribal areas bordering Afghanistan in the aftermath of deadly Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar that killed 150 people, mostly children in December.