QUETTA - At least 13 people including three personnel of Frontier Corps (FC) were killed and five others injured in a clash between security forces and armed men in Uch area of Dera Bugti district on Thursday afternoon. Officials confirmed the gun battle and said that ten militants and three FC personnel had been killed. According to sources, security forces launched search operation in the area around the Uch gas field in the wake of increasing incidents of abduction. They said that security forces raided a militants hideout due to which they opened indiscriminate firing on security forces. Both sides used heavy weapons, including rockets and machine guns which resulted in death of thirteen people including three personnel of security forces while five others sustained injuries. A huge quantity of arms and ammunition was recovered from militants hideouts. Agencies add: The names of the killed FC personnel could not be ascertained. The injured FC personnel had been shifted to PPL hospital where their condition is stated to be out of danger. "Three troops were killed and five others wounded in the rebels' attack in Dera Bugti town," FC chief Major General Saleem Nawaz told AFP, adding that the subsequent operation claimed the lives of ten rebels. FC chief Major General Saleem Nawaz told AFP, "Three troops were killed and five others wounded in the rebels' attack in Dera Bugti town," adding the subsequent operation claimed the lives of ten rebels. Dera Bugti is near Pakistan's biggest natural gas field and was the base of late Baluch rebel leader Nawab Akbar Bugti, who was killed in a military operation in August 2006. Impoverished Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been wracked by an insurgency waged by ethnic Baloch tribes seeking more political rights and a greater share of profits from the region's natural resources. Hundreds of people have died in violence in the province since the insurgency flared in late 2004, but it had quietened down after Bugti's death.