A Chinese woman was shot dead with a male companion on Tuesday in the Pakistani city Peshawar, which borders the tribal belt stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police said.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Chinese woman was shot dead with a male companion on Tuesday in the Pakistani city Peshawar, which borders the tribal belt stronghold of Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants, police said.

They were killed by gunmen on motorbikes while walking in the Kohati bazaar in the historic centre of the northwestern city, police said.

The motive for the shooting and why the Chinese woman was in Peshawar were not immediately clear.

"Those who were killed are one man carrying a Pakistani ID card and one woman carrying a Chinese passport," police official Tahir Ayub told AFP.

They were walking in the Kohati bazaar when gunmen on motorbikes shot them and fled, he said. The woman was aged about 40 and the Pakistani man was named as Suleiman Shams, 22.

It was the fifth shooting or bomb attack in Pakistan's northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa since Thursday, raising fears that violence is again on the rise following a relative decline in unrest in recent months.

Shamsul Arifeen, the father of the Pakistani man, said his son was on vacation from studying English literature at the prestigious Government College University in Lahore, and he had told him he was working as a translator.

"My son told me that he knew a Chinese and wanted to work for her as a translator while she was in Peshawar. I told him not to get involved in this thing as the environment was hostile, but he insisted," Arifeen told AFP.

Police found a Chinese passport with a Pakistani tourist visa inside, a laptop, digital camera and biscuits in the woman's bag, Ayub said.

"It seems that militants killed them to make big news because the woman was a foreigner, otherwise we see no other reason immediately," he said.

The woman came from the eastern city of Lahore and checked in at Peshawar's cheap Motel Inn at 10.00 am (0500 GMT) on Sunday, he added.

Peshawar is a city of 2.5 million near the Afghan border and has long been on the frontline of violence blamed on a five-year Taliban insurgency led by militants opposed to the government's alliance with the United States.

Hospital staff at the main Lady Reading Hospital in Peshawar that received the bodies said the woman was dressed in a black jacket, black shirt, black trousers and high-heeled shoes.