KARACHI: Two Chinese nationals were among three people killed and 10 injured late on Sunday night in a “terrorist attack” near the airport in Pakistan’s southern port city of Karachi, the Chinese embassy and local officials said on Monday.
The separatist militant group, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), claimed the attack in a statement sent to media, saying a vehicle-borne improvised explosive device had targeted the Chinese nationals.
China is a major ally and investor in Pakistan, having pledged over $65 billion in road, infrastructure and development projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.
“We have received the dead body of two Chinese nationals and the mutilated remains of an unidentified body,” chief surgeon for Karachi police, Dr. Sumaiyya Syed, told Arab News. “We have performed the autopsy of all three.”
Syed said 10 people were being treated for injuries at the Jinnah Hospital in Karachi, which included one child.
A Pakistani security official, who was injured in an explosion receives treatment inside an ambulance outside the Karachi airport, Pakistan, early Monday, Oct. 7, 2024. (AP)
The Chinese Embassy in Pakistan said in a statement a convoy of the Port Qasim Electric Power Company was targeted in an attack near the Karachi airport around 11:00pm on Sunday night. Two Chinese nationals were killed and one was injured, the statement said, adding that the Chinese side was working with Pakistani authorities in the aftermath.
“The Chinese Embassy and Consulates General in Pakistan remind Chinese citizens, enterprises and projects in Pakistan to be vigilant, pay close attention to the security situation, strengthen security measures, and make every effort to take safety precautions,” the statement concluded.
The Pakistani foreign office condemned the attack and said the country’s security and law enforcement agencies would make every effort to arrest the perpetrators and their facilitators.
“This barbaric act will not go unpunished,” the foreign office warned.
Sunday night’s attack is the latest by the BLA, the most prominent of a number of separatist groups fighting for independence for Pakistan’s gas-and-mineral-rich Balochistan province, where a low-lying insurgency has been ongoing for the past two decades. Baloch militants blame Pakistan’s state for exploiting the province’s resources, a charge the Pakistani state denies.
Security officials stand at the site of an explosion occured near Karachi airport in Karachi, on late October 6, 2024. (AFP)
The BLA also accuses Beijing of helping Islamabad exploit the province and has attacked Chinese interests and projects in the past, in particular the strategic port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea. It has previously killed Chinese citizens working in the region and attacked Beijing’s consulate in Karachi.
In March this year, a suicide bombing killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver in northwestern Pakistan as they headed to the Dasu Dam, the biggest hydropower project in the country. In 2022, three Chinese educators and their Pakistani driver were killed when an explosion ripped through a van at the University of Karachi.
Sunday’s airport attack followed a deadly day of coordinated attacks in August, most claimed by the BLA, that killed more than 50 people in Balochistan and which Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and other leaders had said sought to harm Chinese-funded investment and development projects.
