CHAMAN: A suicide bomber Wednesday killed eight people and wounded 16 others at the southwestern Chaman border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

“It was a suicide bombing. We have found the severed head on the blast site,” local border force commander Colonel Haider Ali told news agency AFP.

The senior security official said at least one Fronter Corps paramilitary soldier was among the dead.

He said the bomber had arrived at the border from Afghanistan.

Local police officials confirmed the attack following which the Pak-Afghan border was closed.

Chaman is a small town in the southwestern province of Balochistan and is one of the two main crossing points for supplies for American and Nato troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, suffers from a local separatist insurgency. Apart from a long-running nationalist movement, there has also been an alarming rise in sectarian terrorism in the province recently, with ethnic and religious minorities often targeted by militants.