Five Chinese nationals were killed in a suicide bombing attack in northwest Pakistan on Tuesday.
“Five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed in the attack,” Mohammad Ali Gandapur, the regional police chief, told Reuters on Tuesday.
The Chinese nationals were engineers who were en route from Islamabad to a dam construction site in Dasu in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when their convoy was hit. The Pakistani driver was also killed, according to Reuters.
The Dasu Hydropower Project, being built with China’s assistance, has been attacked in the past. In 2021, nine Chinese nationals traveling on a bus were killed in a blast.
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China, which considers Pakistan a strategic ally, has invested billions of dollars to build roads and bridges across the country under Beijing’s signature infrastructure project, the Belt and Road Initiative. China and Pakistan describe their relationship as “iron brothers.”
Tuesday’s incident marks the third major attack on Chinese projects in the country in just a week, following assaults on an airbase and a strategic port in the southwestern province of Balochistan, Reuters reported. The locations are critical to China’s infrastructure investment in Pakistan.
Following the incident, videos of the car carrying Chinese engineers were shared on X, formerly Twitter. The footage was also circulated on the X-like social media platform Weibo.
The attack started leading trends on Weibo, as three of the top 10 social media trends were about suicide bombings.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for Tuesday’s attack or for a similar attack in 2021. Pakistan is grappling with insurgencies led by Islamist groups and ethnic militants demanding independence.
“The Government of Pakistan strongly condemns this heinous act of terrorism. We will take all necessary measures to bring the terrorists and their facilitators to justice. Such dastardly acts cannot dent the resolve of Pakistani nation to fight against the scourge of terrorism,” Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Tuesday.
Sources claim Terrorist attack on Chinese convey in Bisham area of ​​Shangla, 6 people including 5 Chinese were reported dead..!! pic.twitter.com/Umt3grXyDd
— Khurram Iqbal (@khurram143) March 26, 2024
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan has condemned the attack.
“The Chinese Embassy and Consulates in Pakistan strongly condemn this terrorist act, express their deep condolences to the victims of the two countries, and extend their sincere sympathy to the relatives of the victims, and are making every effort to promote the aftermath of the incident in cooperation with the Pakistani side,” the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad said in a statement on Tuesday.
“The Chinese Embassy and Consulates in Pakistan have initiated emergency response work, requesting the Pakistani side to conduct a thorough investigation into the attack and severely punish the culprits, and at the same time, take practical and effective measures to protect the safety of Chinese citizens, organizations and projects in Pakistan, so as to ensure that similar incidents will not happen again.”
The attacks precede Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s anticipated visit to Beijing next week, his first since taking office after the February elections.
In response to the violence, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar has expressed condemnation, reaffirming the nation’s resolve to combat militancy, Reuters reported.
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