ISLAMABAD: A Pakistani paramilitary soldier has died in a “terrorist attack” on a water tanker using an improvised explosive device in the country’s mineral-rich southwestern province of Balochistan, the military said late on Sunday night.

“Terrorists targeted a water bowser through pressurized IED on M-8 near Shapak, Distt Hoshab,” the Inter-Service Public Relations (ISPR), the military’s media wing, said in a statement.

Sepoy Kifaitullah, a resident of Sibi, “embraced martyrdom” in the attack, while a “sanitization operation” had been launched to nab the perpetrators, it added.

“Such cowardly acts by inimical elements, backed by Hostile Intelligence Agencies (HIAs), cannot sabotage the hard-earned peace and prosperity in Balochistan,” the statement said, adding that security forces were “determined to neutralize their nefarious designs even at the cost of blood and lives.”

Balochistan is at the center of the prestigious and strategic multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project.

CPEC has seen Beijing pledge over $60 billion for infrastructure projects in Pakistan, central to China’s wider Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) to develop land and sea trade routes in Asia and beyond.

Earlier this month, six soldiers were killed in an IED attack in the Mach district of Balochistan when soldiers were on patrol duty.