Four Chinese among at least eight dead in Pakistan bus explosion
Islamabad, July 14 (EFE).- At least eight people, including four Chinese nationals, lost their lives Wednesday in an explosion that hit a bus carrying Chinese engineers to an under-construction dam site in northern Pakistan, police said.
The explosion took place in the Upper Kohistan district in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province left 25 people wounded.
A police officer requesting anonymity told EFE that the dead included two paramilitary security men.
The officer said that the authorities were yet to determine the nature of the explosion, but he asserted that it was an attack.
The bus was carrying Chinese engineers and workers to the construction site of the Dasu Hydraulic Power Project in Upper Kohistan of the restive province.
The Water and Power Development Authority (WAPDA) of Pakistan is constructing the dam jointly with two Chinese companies for civil and electro-mechanical works.
Chinese nationals and companies have often been targets of terrorist and separatist groups in Pakistan.
Chinese companies and their workers are in Pakistan for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project (CPEC), a multi-billion dollar infrastructure project financed by Beijing with more than $60-billion investment.
The CPEC, launched in 2015, finances the construction of a trade route that will connect the city of Kashgar, in northwest China’s Xinjiang province, with the Pakistani port of Gwadar.
Gwadar is located in Baluchistan and will pave the way for China to the Arabian sea.
In April this year, five people were killed and 15 injured in a car bomb attack in the parking lot of a luxury hotel in Quetta in the west of Pakistan.
The hotel was to host the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan Nong Rong.
But he had not yet arrived at the hotel when the blast occurred.
In 2018, a group of insurgents attacked the Chinese consulate in the southern city of Karachi.
Security forces killed all three attackers. EFE
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