Quetta, Aug 14 (AP) Suspected militants hurled hand grenades at a house and a store selling Pakistani national flags in the restive southwestern Baluchistan province, killing three people and wounding six others ahead of Pakistan's 77th independence day.

The separatist Baluch Liberation Army group claimed responsibility for the attacks that took place on Tuesday in the provincial capital of Quetta, days after the group asked shop owners not to sell the flags. It also warned people not to celebrate the holiday on Wednesday, marking the Aug 14, 1947 date of Pakistan's independence from British colonial rule.

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Wasim Baig, a spokesman at a government hospital, said the facility had received six injured people and three bodies following the attacks.

Pakistan's army chief Gen Asim Munir vowed to defeat militancy in a televised speech at an event that took place at a military academy in the country's northeast on the eve of Independence Day.

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Munir sought cooperation from neighbouring Afghanistan against the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group that operates from Afghan soil and that has stepped up attacks across the border in the northwest.

The group also operates in southwestern Baluchistan alongside the long-running insurgency in that region, which also shares a border with Afghanistan.

In the latest violence in the northwest, a group of militants killed four security forces in South Waziristan, a district in the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the military said. In a statement, it said troops returned fire, killing six insurgents. (AP)

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)