QUETTA: At least two paramilitary soldiers were killed and three others injured Monday when an explosion hit a paramilitary convoy in Awaran, about 350 kilometres away from the provincial capital Quetta, officials said.

Sources in the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, told Dawn.com that an FC vehicle was on a routine patrol in Mashkay area of Awaran when militants targeted it through a roadside improvised explosive device.

They said the blast also damaged the vehicle carrying the FC personnel. The injured personnel were rushed to Quetta for medical treatment.

FC personnel and local administration reached the spot and cordoned off the area as they initiated investigation into the incident.

No arrests have so far been carried out in connection to the incident, the sources said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

Also read: Suicide attacks near Pak-Iran border; death toll rises to 24

The blast follows a separate gun and suicide attack late Sunday which killed at least 24 people near the Pakistan-Iran border, around 700 kilometres southwest of Quetta.

Officials said four suicide bombers attacked two restaurants full of Shia pilgrims returning from Iran as they stopped at a restaurant in the town of Taftan.

In a separate incident on Sunday, 10 suspected militants were killed in a heavy exchange of fire with security forces in the provinces’s Dera Bugti district.

It was the second major clash between security forces and militants in the area in four days.

Balochistan Home Minister Sarfaraz Ahmed Bugti had claimed on Thursday that 30 militants of the banned Baloch Republican Army (BRA) were killed by security forces in Sui area in Dera Bugti district.

Editorial: Clashes in Balochistan

Balochistan province, one of the country's most deprived areas, 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.