Pakistan: Suicide bomber kills five Chinese in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Launching their third anti-Chinese attack within a week, suspected Baloch terrorists killed five Chinese engineers and their Pakistani driver in an attack on their convoy in Bisham tehsil of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s Shangla, the media reported on Tuesday.
After the blast, the vehicle with the Chinese passengers fell into a gorge and caught fire.
No one claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack.
Police said a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers which was on its way from Islamabad to their camp in Dasu.
Thousands of Chinese nations are in Shangla, working on projects relating to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Bisham Station House Officer (SHO) Bakht Zahir said the incident was a “suicide blast.” Officials were collecting the evidence. Security arrangements were tightened at the spot and the bodies were being shifted to a hospital.
This is the third attack on Chinese interests in Pakistan within a week.
The first two attacks hit an airbase and a strategic port in the southwest province of Baluchistan where China is investing billions in CPEC-related infrastructure projects.
Chinese engineers and Pakistani construction workers have for several years been working on hydroelectric projects as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in the western province of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, where Beijing’s flagship CPEC is coming up slowly.
Dasu, home to a significant dam project, has been a target of previous attacks. In 2021, terrorists killed nine Chinese nationals and two Pakistanis when a bus carrying them to the Dasu Hydropower Project site was targeted.
In a statement, President Asif Ali Zardari strongly condemned the attack and expressed “deep grief” over the deaths of the Chinese nationals. “Anti-Pakistan elements will never succeed in damaging Pak-China friendship,” he asserted.
In November 2022, an anti-terrorism court in Hazara sentenced two accused to death after convicting them for planning the attack.
