Militants on hilltops in Darmalik village, 20 km west of the town of Kohat, opened fire on an oil company team returning from an exploration site in the area, senior police official Fazal Naeem said.

“Two company officials were killed along with four soldiers from the paramilitary Frontier Corps who were providing escort to the team,” he said.

The attackers, believed to number more than a dozen, captured two oil company officials before fleeing in waiting cars, he added.

All those killed and seized in the incident in Kohat region were Pakistani nationals, said the area’s top administrator, Khalid Umerzai.

He said the victims were working for MOL Pakistan, a subsidiary of the MOL Group. A receptionist at the company’s headquarters in Islamabad said the offices were empty late Thursday. The company’s website said it was developing oil and gas blocks in the Kohat area.

The two-car convoy was being guarded by the Frontier Constabulary when it was attacked, said Umerzai.

The area is located close to Pakistan’s lawless tribal region on the Afghan border.

Kohat is a dangerous region close to the Afghan border where militants and criminal gangs are active.

Taleban militants entrenched in the region are engaged in a campaign of violence against government officials and security forces in Pakistan, a key ally in the US-led “war against terror.”

Pakistan has significant oil and gas reserves in the south and northwest, but exploiting them is risky given the precarious security situation. Militants have attacked employees of foreign and local companies before, leading many of them to scale back operations.

In 2009, a Polish engineer working for an oil and gas company in the northwest was kidnapped by militants and later beheaded. A Chinese engineer kidnapped in a separate incident was released unharmed after six months in captivity.