A suspected suicide assault near Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, Pakistan, on Sunday night resulted in the deaths of two Chinese nationals and the injuries of at least ten others.
According to the BBC, a third body—which has not yet been formally identified—is believed to be the attacker’s.
The blast, according to the Chinese embassy in Pakistan, was a “terrorist attack” that was directed at a group of Chinese engineers in the province of Sindh who were working on a power project in the nation.
The attack has been attributed to the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), which has attacked Chinese people working on economic projects in recent years.
A militant group in Pakistan has targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors arriving from Karachi airport, claiming it was a suicide attack. The group named the perpetrator, Shah Fahad, part of a BLA suicide squad called Majeed Brigade. The attack was carried out using a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif called the attack a “heinous act” and offered condolences to the Chinese people.
The Chinese embassy stated that the engineers were part of the Chinese-funded enterprise Port Qasim Power Generation Co., Ltd., which aims to build two coal power plants at Port Qasim, near Karachi. Thousands of Chinese workers are in Pakistan, many of them involved in creating an economic corridor between the two countries as part of Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative. The Port Qasim plant is part of the corridor, along with a number of infrastructure and energy projects in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, which has a rich supply of natural resources.
The BLA has fought a long-running insurgency for a separate homeland and has regularly targeted Chinese nationals in the region, claiming ethnic Baloch residents were not receiving their share of wealth extracted from foreign investors. The Chinese embassy reminded its citizens and Chinese enterprises in Pakistan to be vigilant and take safety precautions.
Roads leading to Jinnah International Airport were sealed off following the attack, but the airport is functioning as usual on Monday. There have been multiple attacks on Chinese nationals in Pakistan in recent years, with the BLA claiming responsibility for several of them.
(BBC)
