PESHAWAR, Pakistan - Militants using a car bomb and firing weapons attacked the US consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar on Monday and killed six hours after a suicide bomber killed 38 people elsewhere in the northwest, officials said. Pakistani Taliban militants claimed responsibility for the attack on the consulate, in which eight people including three militants were killed but no one in the mission was hurt, and vowed more violence. The attacks underscore the danger posed by militants in nuclear-armed U.S. ally Pakistan after a year of military offensives which have dealt the Islamists significant setbacks. The assault on the tightly guarded consulate came hours after the bomb blast at a rally of supporters of an ethnic Pashtun-based political party staunchly opposed to the militants. "I saw attackers in two vehicles. Some of them carried rocket-propelled grenades. They first opened fire at security personnel at the post near the consulate and then blasts went off," city resident Siraj Afridi told Reuters. A Pakistani intelligence official described the assault as a well-planned suicide attack.