Gunmen attacked a coastguard checkpost in southwestern Pakistan on Saturday, killing seven officials and wounding seven others, officials said.
The incident happened in the Suntsar area of Gwadar district, 1,420km southwest of Quetta, the capital of the oil and gas rich Baluchistan province that borders Iran and Afghanistan.
“Around 24 gunmen armed with rockets and heavy weapons, attacked the checkpost and killed seven coastguard officials,” provincial home secretary Akbar Hussain Durrani told AFP.
He said at least seven coastguard officials were also injured in the early morning attack.
A local tribal police official Muhammad Ali also confirmed the attack and casualties and said the identity of the attackers was not immediately known.
Baluchistan suffers from both Islamist militancy and a regional insurgency which began in 2004, with rebels demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources.
The province has also increasingly become a flashpoint for surging sectarian violence between Pakistan's majority Sunni Muslims and Shiites, who account for around a fifth of the country's 180 million people.
Elsewhere in the northwestern town of Tal that borders the restive North Waziristan tribal region, at least two paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) soldiers were killed and 25 others wounded in an attack on their checkpost on Saturday.
“Around 50 militants attacked an FC checkpost and exchanged fire with the soldiers for over two hours, which killed two FC soldiers and wounded 25 others,” a local intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.
Another intelligence official also confirmed the incident and said that the attack was repulsed after FC troops retaliated.
He added that 18 militants were killed in retaliatory fire by the FC .
The northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province is on the frontline of a seven-year Taliban insurgency and abuts the semi-autonomous tribal belt, where US drone strikes target Taliban and Al-Qaeda operatives.
Washington considers the tribal areas a major hub of Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants plotting attacks on the West and in Afghanistan.
