PESHAWAR, Pakistan (AFP) - A 10-year-old boy was killed and four others were wounded when an explosive apparently hidden inside a toy they were playing with detonated in north-western Pakistan on Thursday, police said.

The incident took place in Khaki, a suburb of Nowshera town in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa district, where many Afghan refugees are settled.

"Up to six children were playing with a toy that they had found from the garbage they collected from nearby areas when it exploded, killing the boy and wounding four other children," senior local police official Khurram Rasheed told AFP.

Another local police official, Saeed Ullah, confirmed the incident, and said the boy who was killed in the blast was Afghan.

Dozens of children, mostly in the insurgency-hit north-western Pakistan, have lost their lives in the past when playing with "toys" that turned out to be bombs.

Pakistani troops have been fighting for years against homegrown insurgents in several north-western cities and the tribal belt, which Washington considers the main hub of Taleban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.