Updated | Suicide bombers kill five outside court in north-west Pakistan

A group of suicide bombers struck outside a courthouse in north-western Pakistan on Tuesday, killing five people in an attack claimed by a Taliban splinter group.

Three attackers hit the courthouse in the town of in Tangi in the Charsadda district. One of the bombers detonated his suicide vest at the court's main gate while police shot and killed the two other assailants, according to the district police chief, Sohail Khalid. The other two also wore suicide vests but had not

managed to set them off before being gunned down.

The suicide attackers reportedly threw hand grenades and opened fire as they tried enter the court premises.

At least one lawyer is reported to be among four dead.

A spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban's Jamaat-ur-Ahrar faction claimed responsibility for the attack.

Pakistan has been hit by a wave of suicide bomb attacks claimed by various Islamist militant groups in the past 10 days, with about 100 being killed.

In one of the attacks last week, dozens of worshippers gathered at a famed Sufi shrine were killed when an Islamic State suicide bomber walked into the shrine's main hall in the southern Sindh province and detonated his explosives on Thursday. The death toll from that attack has since risen to 90.

The shrine bombing prompted a countrywide crackdown by security forces targeting militants and their hideouts.

In recent years it has launched major offensives against militant strongholds in the tribal regions along the border with Afghanistan, but insurgents have continued to carry out attacks elsewhere in the country.