QUETTA: Eight people including four security personnel have been killed in three separate clashes with militants in southwest Pakistan and Karachi, officials said on Tuesday.
In a major attack on Monday, militants ambushed a Frontier Corps convoy in Panjgoor district of Balochistan province, killing three personnel including a lieutenant colonel and wounding three others.
Nobody has so far claimed the attack in Panjgoor, 520 kilometres (320 miles) southwest of Quetta, but a security official said it was presumably carried out by Baloch separatists.
In a separate incident, police in the southern city of Karachi killed four suspected Pakistani Taliban militants in a shootout.
"We have killed four militants including a cousin of the chief of Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) Maulvi Fazlullah in an exchange of fire," Rao Anwar Ahmed, a senior police official in Karachi, told AFP.
"We had raided a hideout in Malir area but it led to the shootout," he said.
In another incident in Karachi, suspected militants killed a police official and wounded another when they raided a house to detain a suspect for an assassination attempt on an MP, which took place on Saturday.
Two people --- a 10-year-old boy and a security guard -- were killed in that attack.
Pakistan has been battling Islamist, ethnic and political insurgencies for decades but violence has been reduced in recent years following military operations across the country.