Pakistani paramilitary forces killed three suspected militants, including a senior commander, in the country\’s restive southwest on Tuesday, officials said, following two days of deadly attacks on civic points.

Pakistani paramilitary forces killed three suspected militants, including a senior commander, in the country's restive southwest on Tuesday, officials said, following two days of deadly attacks on civic points.

Tuesday's raid in Quetta in Baluchistan province - which has been racked by sectarian violence in recent years - came as authorities arrested 39 suspected militants in a separate operation.

"Our forces raided a compound in the eastern outskirts of Quetta today and killed three militants," a spokesman for the Frontier Corps (FC) force said, adding that troops seized eight hand grenades and five small machine guns.

"One of the dead militants has been identified as Mehmood Rind who was chief of Jaish-ul-Islam (Arabic translation of Islam army) takfiri group in Baluchistan," Akbar Hussain Durrani, the provincial home secretary, said.

A night market bombing in the city on Sunday killed one and wounded eight, and was claimed by both Jaish-ul-Islam and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, another high profile takfiri group.

The blast was followed Monday by the gunning down of two brothers at a passport office and a policeman who was at the scene.

Police and paramilitary forces have rounded up 39 suspects in connection with Monday's shooting, the FC spokesman said.

Takfiri attacks in Pakistan claimed thousands of lives in the country over the past decade.

Forty-five Shiite Ismailis were massacred in the southern city of Karachi in May in the first attack in the country claimed by the so-called 'Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant' (ISIL) takfiri terrorist group.