Pakistani Taliban kill 4 paramilitary troopers in gun attack in Quetta

Pakistani Taliban militants shot dead four paramilitary soldiers in Pakistan's western city of Quetta, where last month seven security men were killed in a suicide attack, police said.

The Frontier Corps (FC) personnel were targeted in Quetta when they were on a routine patrol.

The Frontier Corps troopers were patrolling the residential neighbourhood of Langoabad on motorcycles when they were fired on by gunmen also riding bikes, said Naseebullah Khan, Senior Superintendent of Police for Quetta.

"The four men were shot in the head," Khan told Reuters, adding that handguns were used in the attack.

Deputy Inspector General (DIG) Quetta Razzaq Cheema said that the attackers fired at the vehicle carrying the FC officials and fled after the incident.

"Four security personnel were killed in the attack," Cheema said.

Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack.

Balochistan Governor Mohammad Achakzai condemned that the latest attack and urged the law enforcement agencies to arrest the culprits at the earliest.

Quetta is the capital of Baluchistan province, rich in resources and at the heart of $58 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) stretching from the Arabian Sea to China's Xinjiang region.

The province, the poorest and least developed in Pakistan, has suffered nearly a decade of separatist violence against the government.

The area also is plagued by attacks from Islamist movements like the Pakistani Taliban, who are separate from but loosely allied with the Taliban movement that ruled neighboring Afghanistan in the 1990s and has fought an insurgency against western and Afghan government forces since 2001.

At least seven persons were killed on Zarghoon Road in Quetta last month when a suicide bomber rammed his motorbike into a police truck.