Gunmen have shot dead seven people in separate incidents in Pakistan's restive southwest, police said Saturday.
At least three Shiite Muslims were killed on Saturday when two men riding a motorbike opened fire on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of oil and gas rich Baluchistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan.
"All three men died on the spot," senior police official Tariq Manzoor told AFP.
In another incident, three people including a student and two employees of Mastung cadet college were killed in a drive-by shooting on Friday.
They were returning to Quetta from Mastung town, 55 kilometres (34 miles) south of the provincial capital, when gunmen riding a motorbike opened fire on their vehicle.
"Two employees of the college died on the spot while the student succumbed to injuries on the way to hospital," local police official Mohammad Alam said.
Elsewhere, a man was killed in a landmine explosion in Dera Bugti town, 400 kilometres southeast of Quetta, local security officials said on Saturday.
Baluchistan is rife with Islamist militancy, sectarian violence and regional insurgency.
Hundreds of people have died since Baluch rebels rose up in 2004 demanding political autonomy and a greater share of profits from the region's wealth of natural resources.
Elsewhere, at least 14 Taliban militants were killed in Barizona, a town in the northwestern Kurram tribal region, during clashes with local anti-Taliban fighters on Saturday, local official Mohammad Haider Khan told AFP.
He said the militants came to the area from Orakzai tribal region and attacked the tribal fighters -- known as lashkar -- on Friday, adding that clashes continued on Saturday.
A senior local tribal police chief, Abdus Samad Khan, confirmed the clashes and said that bodies of 14 militants were still in the custody of the tribal lashkar.
Pakistan's semi-autonomous tribal belt became a stronghold for hundreds of extremists who fled neighbouring Afghanistan after the US-led invasion in late 2001.
Washington says the militants use the rugged terrain to plot and stage attacks in Afghanistan, where more than 120,000 NATO and US troops are helping Afghan forces battle the Taliban.
Pakistan has been hit recently by multiple bomb blasts and suicide attacks that authorities have blamed on Islamist militants seeking revenge for a deadly military offensive against the Taliban in the northwest.
