QUETTA: Four policemen were killed Tuesday in a gunbattle with militants in Balochistan, police said, hours after four people died in a bomb blast in the region’s capital.

Militants identified by police as being from the banned Pakistan Taliban opened fire on a pre-dawn patrol in Kuchlak, officials said and were still on the run.

“Militants opened fire on a police team from a compound killing four policemen,” senior local police official Muhammad Zohaib told AFP.

“One terrorist was also killed during the exchange of fire, while the remainder escaped.”

Counter-terrorism department official Aitzaz Goraya said the militants were from the outlawed group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, which is separate from Afghanistan’s Taliban but shares a similar ideology.

On Monday four people were killed – two police and two civilians – by a motorcycle bomb in a busy market in Quetta. That attack was claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army.

Pakistan has been battling a years-long insurgency by militants in Balochistan who are demanding a bigger share of the province’s wealth, as well as attacks by the banned group.

Tensions in the province, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, have been stoked by a flood of Chinese investment under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative that locals say has not benefited them.

China is investing in the area under a $54 billion project known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, upgrading infrastructure, power and transport links between its far-western Xinjiang region and Pakistan’s Gwadar port.