­­­­Bomb, gun and rocket attacks killed 18 Pakistanis in flashpoints bordering Afghanistan yesterday as the country celebrated Independence Day, officials said.

Fourteen civilians were killed and 16 wounded when a bomb ripped through a roadside restaurant in the town of Dera Allah Yar, part of the restive southwestern province of Baluchistan, police said.

After most of those trapped under debris from a collapsed roof were recovered, district police chief Javed Gharshin said that 14 people had been killed and 16 others wounded.

Mr Gharshin said four suspects had been arrested in connection with the bomb­ing.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, about 400 kilometres south-east of Quetta, the provincial capital, which came as Pakistan celebrated the 64th anniver-sary of independence from Britain.

Elsewhere in the province, gunmen on motorcycles shot dead a local journalist in the town of Khuzdar, police said.

“Gunmen on a motorbike shot dead journalist Munir Noor when he was returning home after shopping at a nearby market,” local police station chief Abdul Qadir Sheikh said from the area, some 155 miles south of Quetta.

Mr Noor was a correspondent of the private Online news agency.

Baluchistan has seen a recent surge in violence linked to a separatist insurgency, sectarian clashes and Taliban militants.

Local separatists rose up in 2004, demanding political auto­nomy and a greater share of profits from the region’s natural resources.

In Pakistan’s northwestern tribal belt, at least three para­military soldiers were killed and 25 wounded when militants fired a rocket into their camp as they prepared for an Independence Day assembly.