Television footage showed the fiery wreckage of a vehicle with a large number of police personnel combing the scene. Shortly afterwards, the Islamabad Police declared a “red alert” in the city, reported Dawn News.

According to Deputy Inspector General of Police Sohail Zafar Chattha, the police spotted a “suspicious vehicle” with a man and a woman aboard at 10:15am in the area.

“When the police stopped the vehicle, the couple came out of the car. The long-haired man, while being checked by the officers, went inside the vehicle on some pretext and then detonated himself,” he was quoted as saying by Dawn News in a media briefing at the crime scene alongside Islamabad Deputy Commissioner Irfan Nawaz Memon.

Chattha said a police officer of the Eagle Squad was killed in the blast while four others officers were injured.

He appreciated the police for “saving Islamabad from a major foul play”.

Meanwhile, the joint executive director of the Pakistan Institute of Medical Sciences (Pims), Dr Iqbal Durrani, told Dawn.com that two bodies and five injured policemen had been brought to the hospital.

Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah, while terming the man and woman terrorists , said that they had plans to attack a "high value target".

"This would have been a shame for our country if the attack had taken place at a high-value building or Red Zone area," the interior minister told Geo News.

PM Shehbaz Sharif has asked for a report of the blast.