QUETTA: Two Afghan Police personnel were killed in a militant attack in Chaman area of Balochistan on Sunday.

A senior administration officer in Chaman, who declined to be named, told Dawn via telephone that six militants on three motorcycles opened fire at the vehicle of Afghan Policemen in Chaman's Bypass area.

The assailants sped away on their motorcycles after the strike, the official said.

The Afghan cops, who belonged to Helmand province of Afghanistan, were en route to Quetta for medical treatment when the attack took place.

The bodies were shifted to District Headquarter Hospital Chaman for postmortem.

There was no claim of responsibility for the attack.

Chaman is a small town in the southwestern province of Balochistan which borders Afghanistan.

In another incident, two suspected militants were killed during exchange of fire with security forces in Lehri tehsil of Balochistan Sibi district on Sunday.

According to a Frontier Corps spokesman, militants opened fire at the patrolling party of security forces in Lehri area wounding four personnel.

Security forces resorted to retaliatory firing during which two of the attackers were killed.

Weapons were recovered from the possession of militants, the para-military spokesman added.

A search operation was launched and more troops were called in the area to apprehend the remaining militants, he said.

The official claim could not be verified by independent sources.

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.