Five Chinese nationals killed in suicide bomb attack in Pakistan: Police

Attacker has rammed explosives-laden vehicle into convoy of Chinese engineers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa hours after Baloch rebels attacked a naval base.

Five Chinese nationals have been killed in an explosion when their convoy was attacked by a suicide bomber in northwest Pakistan, says a top police officer.

A suicide bomber rammed an explosives-laden vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers which was on its way from Islamabad to their camp in Dasu in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, Mohammad Ali Gandapur, the regional police chief, said on Tuesday.

“Five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed in the attack,” Gandapur said.

Islamabad is Beijing’s closest regional ally, but the security of Chinese workers has long been of concern in Pakistan.

Dasu is the site of a key hydroelectric dam, under construction by the China Gezhouba Group Company, and the area has been attacked in the past. A blast on a bus had killed 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals, in 2021.

The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa police had reached the spot and started relief operations. The rest of the people in the convoy have been protected, Gandapur said.

The attack came hours after armed fighters attacked a Pakistan naval airbase, killing at least one paramilitary soldier while security forces killed all five of the assailants in retaliatory fire, officials said on Tuesday.

Monday’s attack on the Turbat base in southwestern Pakistan was the second assault by ethnic Baloch fighters on a military facility in the past week.

“We escaped a huge loss,” said a statement from Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s office.

A Pakistan Navy spokesman said all five attackers were killed after they tried to break into the base. One paramilitary soldier was also killed, according to a military statement.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan, claimed responsibility for the assault in a statement. The BLA has previously been involved in attacks on Pakistani and Chinese interests in the region and elsewhere.

China has invested heavily in the mineral-rich southwestern province of Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, including developing the port of Gwadar, despite decades-long separatist violence.

The naval base is significant to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor which also encompasses roads and energy projects and is part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Pakistani security forces said last week they repulsed a gun and bomb attack by the BLA on a complex outside Gwadar, in which two soldiers and all eight fighters were killed.

In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan province overlooking the flagship Chinese-backed deep-water seaport in Gwadar that gives strategic access to the Arabian Sea – killing at least eight people.