Four soldiers were among at least 13 people killed Sunday in a bomb blast in front of a video market near the army area in northwestern Pakistan, local TV reports said.

The private Geo TV quoted police sources as saying that the suicide attack also injured up to 20 other people.

Police said that it also destroyed several shops at the market, located at the army area in the center of Mardan, some 60 kilometers north of Peshawar, the capital of the North West Frontier Province (NWFP).

Emergency was declared in the hospitals and the people were asked to donate blood.

The injured were shifted to the local military and civil hospitals. Several injured are in critical condition, according to hospital sources.

No group claimed responsibility of the blast. But the authorities blame militants for such attacks in army areas.

The army and police cordoned off the area after the blast and ambulances rushed to the site to shift the bodies and the injured.

The rescue teams faced difficulty to shift the injured as there was no electricity in the area.

Security forces are regularly targeted in suicide attacks and bomb blasts in Pakistan, mostly in northwest.

It is the second blast in Mardan in less than a month.

A powerful bomb blast near a police station in the city killed at least three persons and injured over 35 on April 26.

(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2008)