QUETTA: Pakistan's paramilitary said a bomb planted on a bicycle and a shootout killed two soldiers and wounded seven others in separate incidents in the country's southwest on Wednesday.

The Frontier Corps said the exchange of fire took place in the Kuchh district in insurgency-rife Balochistan province along the Iranian border, where militants had taken refuge in a house.

“One soldier embraced martyrdom while troops killed all five terrorists and recovered arms and ammunition,” FC spokesman Murtaza Baig told AFP.

A bomb planted on a cycle exploded alongside a paramilitary patrol in Kalat district, some 160 kilometres south of Quetta, killing one soldier and wounding seven, the spokesman said.

Violence has surged this year in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

The province suffers from a separatist insurgency and Taliban militants.