QUETTA: At least eight levies personnel were killed and one levies personnel was injured on Sunday when unidentified gunmen open fired at a checkpost near Wadh tehsil on the Quetta-Karachi Highway.

Gunmen stormed Johar tribal police post Sunday in southwestern Pakistan.

The attack took place in Wadh area of Balochistan's Khuzdar district, where insurgents have launched previous attacks, said Baroz Khan, a senior government official.

Officers manning the post returned fire and pushed the gunmen back toward nearby mountains, Khan said.

Reinforcements from the paramilitary Frontier Corps later reached the post, some 300 kilometers south of Quetta, the provincial capital, he said.

Security and rescue teams immediately reached the site of the incident and shifted the injured to Khuzdar Civil Hospital.

Secretary Home and Tribal Affairs Balochistan, Akbar Hussain Durrani claimed that the area has been cordoned off as a search operation is underway.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion immediately fell on Baloch nationalist groups who have claimed responsibility for such attacks in the past.

For over a decade, Balochistan has been the scene of a low-intensity insurgency by some nationalist groups demanding autonomy or a greater share from mineral and gas resources being extracted from the impoverished province.

It is also believed to be home to many Afghan Taliban members.

Residents say a crackdown has sparked disappearances in Balochistan blamed on security forces.

They say the disappearances swelled in the mid-2000s, when Gen Pervez Musharraf's government cracked down on insurgents there.

Two years ago, the Voice for Baloch Missing Persons organization handed the United Nations a list of 12,000 names they said belonged to people missing in the conflict.

— Reported by Hafeez Sheerani.