Five militants, three of them wearing suicide bomb vests, were killed on Tuesday when they attacked a military training centre in northwest Pakistan, officials said.
The armed attackers tried to enter the training ground in the northwestern town of Mardan and a gun battle with security forces ensued, leaving all five militants dead and four soldiers wounded, a senior security official told said.
"An attack on the Punjab regiment centre in Mardan was averted this morning by security forces," said a security official, who declined to be identified.
"Security forces opened fired on militants when they tried to jump over the wall of a training facility where recruits were training at around 6.00 a.m. (0100 GMT)," the official said.
"Three suicide bombers blew themselves up while two were killed in an exchange of fire that also wounded four of our men," he added.
Another security official and intelligence officials confirmed the incident and death toll.
Nobody immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but Taliban militants have been active in the area and have carried out several attacks on government and military targets in the past.
Bombs and attacks blamed on Taliban and Al-Qaeda-linked militants have killed more than 3,560 people across nuclear-armed Pakistan since government troops besieged a radical mosque in Islamabad in July 2007.
Much of the violence has been concentrated in northwest Pakistan and the border areas with Afghanistan, where around 143,000 US and NATO troops are battling to turn around a nine-year war against Taliban insurgents
Militants have unleashed a wave of attacks across Pakistan in recent months in retaliation for military operations in their bastions in the northwest bordering Afghanistan.
Militants killed 18 civilians in an attack on a convoy of vehicles escorted by security forces in the tribal region of Kurram at the weekend.
In a separate incident, two Christian men, accused of committing blasphemy, were shot dead outside a court in the Pakistani city of Faisalabad on Monday, police said.