ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister (DPM) Ishaq Dar expressed solidarity with China on the killing of its three nationals in a militant attack in Tajikistan and condemned the loss of lives in an inferno a high-rise apartment complex in Hong Kong last week, state media said on Sunday.
The attack took place last Wednesday when the Chinese nationals were working for a gold-extraction company in southern Tajikistan. The Chinese nationals were targeted in an attack that Tajik authorities say was carried out from across the border with Afghanistan. Tajikistan’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement subsequently that the assault targeted a compound belonging to Shohin SM, a private gold-mining company operating in the Shamsiddin Shohin district along the Tajik–Afghan frontier.
Dar condemned the incident, as well as the deaths of over 128 people in a fire in Hong Kong last week as he met Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Jiang Zaidong in Islamabad on Sunday.
“The DPM/FM expressed condolences over the tragic killing of three Chinese nationals in Tajikistan, near the Afghan border,” the state-run Associated Press of Pakistan (APP) reported.
“He also extended heartfelt sympathies for the loss of lives and all those affected by the recent devastating fires in the Wang Fuk Court residential complex in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.”
He reaffirmed that Islamabad stood in “full solidarity” with China during such testing times, the APP said.
Discussions between the two were also held on Pakistan–China bilateral cooperation across diverse areas, as well as recent regional and international developments, the state media said.
Pakistan accords special importance to China as a regional ally, primarily because of its decades-long friendship with its neighbor. China is also an important investor in the South Asian country. Beijing has invested billions of dollars in a network of roads, railways and energy pipelines corridor over the years that will connect Pakistan’s Gwadar Port in the southwest to China’s Xinjiang region, known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).
Both countries closely cooperate in military, defense and other sectors, wary of their mutual regional rival India.
