Unidentified gunmen killed two shopkeepers from Pakistan’s Shiite Muslim minority when they opened fire in a congested market in the southwest of the country, the second such attack in a week.

Police said two other Shiite shopkeepers and a passerby were wounded in the attack in central Quetta, the the capital of restive Baluchistan province.

“The attackers came on motorcycles and opened fire indiscriminately, killing two cloth merchants and wounding two shopkeepers and a passerby,” Quetta police chief Abdul Razzak Cheema told AFP.

Quetta was already tense following the killing of four people, three of them Shiites, in the city on Monday.

Senior police official Aitzaz Goraya confirmed the attack and casualties and told AFP that police were searching for the attackers.

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack but Baluch separatists demanding greater autonomy have been waging an insurgency for years and the province is also riven by sectarian strife and Islamist violence.

Sectarian violence — in particular by Sunni hardliners against Shiites, who make up roughly 20 percent of Pakistan’s 200 million people — has claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.

This month, 45 Shiites were massacred in the southern city Karachi.

Three police officers have been gunned down by unidentified gunmen in early-morning attack in Pakistan.

According to reports sub-inspector Sikandar and constables Ashraf and Asif were still on their night shift duty when unidentified gunmen opened fire on them in Aziz Abad area of Pakistan’s business hub of Karachi early on Wednesday morning.

All three police officers died on the spot while a fourth one sustained injuries.

Reports also suggest the attackers were four people who came on two motorbikes and after spraying bullets on police van with their 9mm pistols runaway from the area.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but security forces cordoned off the area following the incident and launched an investigation into it.

Heavy gunfire and explosions have been heard in an upscale neighborhood in Afghanistan’s capital.

The firefight seemed focused Tuesday night in the Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, which is home to several embassies.

Police could not be immediately reached for comment.

Insurgents attacked a courthouse near the Afghan capital Tuesday, killing two police officers as a militant assault raged on in a district in a central province besieged for weeks, authorities said.

Four militants launched the attack on the court in the capital of Wardak province, some 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Kabul, said Attaullah Khogyani, a spokesman for the governor.

One of the attackers blew himself up as the other three exchanged fire with police before being killed, Khogyani said.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes amid intensified fighting across many parts of Afghanistan since the Taliban launched their warm weather offensive a month ago. Ambushes on police checkpoints are becoming increasingly common as they often are poorly manned and equipped.

In Uruzgan province, officials said that a district has been under attack by militants for the past two weeks.

“A high number of Taliban are attacking different checkpoints but we are not getting any response from senior officials in Kabul,” district chief Abdul Karim Karimi said.

He said that since the fighting began, 12 soldiers have been killed and dozens were wounded.

“Unless we get government help, we are going to lose the district,” he said.

On Monday, militants killed at least 26 police officers and soldiers in ambushes in southern Helmand province. As police retreated, militants surrounded the police headquarters of Naw Zad district and fired down on them from surrounding hills, district police chief Napas Khan said.

According to Afghan media outlets, ongoing clashes between Taliban and militants loyal to the so-called Islamic State (IS) or Dayesh in western Afghanistan have left at least 27 insurgents dead and 20 other people injured.

Afghan military spokesman Mohammad Hanif Rezaey reportedly specified that 15 IS militants and 12 from the Taliban were killed in fighting on Sunday afternoon in three areas within Farah province’s Khak-e-Safid district.

Among the injured were 13 IS members and seven from Taliban ranks.

Afghan TV channel Tolo reports that clash between Taliban and Dayesh outfits which flared up in Khak-e-Safid district of Farah province Sunday evening have so far claimed the lives of 15 Dayesh insurgents and 12 Taliban fighters.  ,” Tolo reported in its news bulletin.

Taliban militants who want Dayesh outfit to abandon Afghanistan, have also captured 12 more rival fighters in the fighting, Tolo reported in its news bulletin.

Xinhua reports it is the second time that fighting between Taliban and Dayesh, the two anti-government extremist groups has been reported in Afghanistan.

The previous clash, according to media reports, had taken place in Chaparhar district of the eastern Nangarhar province couple of weeks ago.

A Pakistani military official says raids by security forces in the port city of Karachi have killed seven militants.

Brig. Gen. Mohammad Khurram told reporters Tuesday that the two overnight raids came after reports that militants from main Pakistani Taliban group planned to attack a security forces headquarters near the airport.

Khurram says that in the first raid, three militants were trapped in a building and killed themselves by detonating explosive vests.

He adds that in the second raid, security forces killed three militants while a fourth blew himself up.

After the Pakistani army began military operations in their tribal sanctuaries, many Taliban militants began hiding in urban areas.

More than 70 people were wounded when a Taliban truck bomber detonated a tonne of explosives outside a government complex in southern Afghanistan, the latest in a series of attacks that have sent civilian casualties surging.

Women and children were among those hurt in the explosion in the capital of Zabul province, Qalat, which ripped off the facades of government buildings and left scattered piles of rubble.

Separately, at least six civilians were killed late Monday when their pickup truck struck a roadside bomb in the Shahwalikot district of southern Kandahar province, officials said.

The violence comes as the Taliban step up attacks during their summer fighting offensive despite Kabul’s repeated overtures to the insurgents to reopen peace negotiations.

Deputy provincial police chief Ghulam Jilani Farahi said 73 people, including six police officers and four members of the provincial council, were wounded in the attack on the Qalat complex, which houses several government buildings.

Zabul’s police chief Mirwais Noorzai confirmed that more than 70 people were wounded, and said that four of them were in critical condition.

“Around 1,000 kilograms of explosives was used in the attack,” he said.

The Afghan Taliban launched their annual spring-summer offensive — titled ‘Azm’ (Determination) — in late April, vowing nationwide attacks in what is expected to be the bloodiest summer in a decade.

The group, which has been waging a 13-year war against the US-backed Afghan government, admitted they were behind the Zabul attack although no one has claimed responsibility for the Kandahar roadside bombing.

“As part of the Azm operation, this afternoon a martyrdom-seeker… conducted an attack on the provincial council, where cruel and unjust decisions against Muslims and Islam were being taken,” Taliban spokesman Qari Yousuf Ahmadi said in a statement.

Resolute Support, the NATO-led non-combat mission in Afghanistan, condemned the Zabul attack, saying in a statement it was “disgusted by the Taliban’s complete disregard for human life”.

The insurgents have launched a series of attacks in the capital and around the country as NATO forces pull back from the frontlines.

General John Campbell, the commander of international forces in Afghanistan reports that the Islamic State is recruiting fighters in Afghanistan and next door in Pakistan as well.

Gen. John Campbell, commander of the US-led coalition in Afghanistan, said that Nato military commanders plan to establish a base in Kabul to help distribute aid, facilitate weapons sales and continue efforts to train Afghan security forces.

Although Campbell stressed that Nato civilian officials probably will be in charge of the new mission, a contingent of troops also would be needed to secure the base. Campbell said that Nato forces also could be used to help bolster the Afghan air force and intelligence service.

“Countries will see that there are areas where they can help Afghanistan, and they will want to do that. And instead of trying to figure it out on their own, there will be a Nato headquarters where they can synchronise this,” said Campbell, adding it was too early to speculate how many Nato personnel would remain in Afghanistan and where they would be housed.

But preliminary discussions about the matter were held in mid-May when foreign ministers from the 28-nation Nato alliance met in Turkey. There was also a Nato defence chiefs meeting in Brussels last week. Nato leaders hope to finalise decisions about Afghanistan ahead of a scheduled Nato summit in Warsaw next summer, Campbell said.

“Our future presence will be led by civilians. It will have a light footprint, but it will have a military component,” Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement.

The talks are another sign that Obama will face continued difficulty in trying to fulfil his promise to withdraw all US forces from Afghanistan by the time he leaves office in January 2017.

Earlier this year, Obama had to backtrack on an earlier pledge to slash the number of US troops in Afghanistan by half over the course of the year. Instead, with the Taliban and Daesh posing continued threats in Afghanistan, Obama agreed to keep 9,800 American troops in the country into next year. They form the bulk of the 13,200 international troops currently stationed here.

Obama has stressed, though, that he plans to complete the withdrawal during his final months in office.

But any post-2016 Nato operation would be in addition to what Campbell said are already plans to leave a residual force of American troops behind to guard the US. Embassy. Preliminary planning that calls for about 1,000 troops and contractors, Campbell said.

Talks about a long-term international presence in Afghanistan are taking place amid growing signs that the Afghan military is struggling to repel the Taliban insurgency.

Since the start of the annual spring fighting season in late April, Afghan forces have been locked in bloody battles with Taliban militants in at least 10 provinces. In northern Afghanistan, the challenges facing the Afghan army are so persistent that it is paying local militias to help it fight the Taliban, Reuters reported.

Campbell is also worried by the expansion of Daesh into Afghanistan and Pakistan. Citing local officials, Afghanistan’s Tolo News reported Friday that Daesh militants now control most of Nangahar province in northeastern Afghanistan.

Campbell dismissed those reports, saying neither Daesh nor the Taliban control large areas of territory in Afghanistan. But Campbell said that the threat posed by Daesh has been steadily increasing over the past six months.

“We are not seeing it operationalised to the point of like what you are seeing in Syria,” Campbell said. “But I think, given time, that is where they want to go, so I think we have to squash that out now while we can.”

As part of a security agreement between Afghanistan and the United States, American forces are continuing raids and air strikes against targets deemed a security risk. Campbell declined to comment on whether those targets now include Daesh militants, but he said he has “all the appropriate authorities” to protect coalition troops.

If all US troops in Afghanistan fall under Nato command in 2017, though, Campbell said new negotiations would be needed to continue those operations.