A car bomb ripped through a market in Peshawar on Friday, killing at least 12 people and injuring 12, officials said. The device in a pickup truck exploded near a mosque in Matni, a southern suburb of Peshawar, the main city in Pakistan's lawless northwest, senior police official Khurshid Khan told AFP. Another senior police official, Zarman Shah, told AFP the death toll stood at 12, with 12 wounded -- three in a critical condition. Mian Iftikhar Hussain, the home minister for northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, told AFP three men had taken the vehicle to a workshop and a mechanic was working on it when the blast occurred. "We are investigating whether the car was brought to (the) workshop for mechanical repairs or to plant a bomb, or whether the bomb had already been planted and it went off during repair," Hussain said. Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants have been carrying out similar bombings and suicide attacks in Peshawar. Pakistan is on the frontline of the US-led war on Al-Qaeda. Since July 2007, a Taliban-led insurgency has been fighting against the US-allied government. In the last five years, attacks blamed on Islamist bombers have killed more than 5,000 people according to an AFP tally. Pakistan says 35,000 of its people have been killed as a result of terrorism in the country since the 9/11 attacks on the United States.