Four, including 3 Chinese nationals killed in Pakistan university attack
Islamabad, Apr 26 (EFE).- At least four people, including three Chinese nationals, were killed and four others were injured on Tuesday in a suicide attack against a Pakistani university the first such bombing claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army which was carried out by a woman.
“There were three foreigners, two women and one man, and one Pakistani among the dead,” Ghulam Nabi Memon, police chief of the city of Karachi – where the incident took place – told reporters.
Memon said that all the deceased foreigners were Chinese citizens working at the university, adding that four others were injured in the attack, including a Chinese national and two security guards.
A regional police official told local media outlets that the Chinese victims were working at the Confucius Institute of the Karachi University.
Local broadcasters aired images of a white van, which had been carrying the victims, engulfed by flames and riddled by bullets.
The bombing was claimed by the BLA, a separatist group of the Baloch ethnic community which is fighting for an independent Balochistan.
“The mission was carried out by first female fidayee (suicide bomber)” of the group, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch said in a statement.
Pakistan’s newly appointed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif condemned the attack and expressed his condolences to the victims’ families in a tweet.
In July 2021, at least nine Chinese employees and five Pakistanis were killed in a blast targeting the bus carrying them to a dam construction site in the northeastern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
During the same month, two unidentified assailants shot at two Chinese workers, injuring one of them, while they were travelling to work in a car in Karachi.
The latest attack comes amid rising insurgency-related violence in Pakistan, especially in the southwestern Balochistan province, the largest in the country and rich in natural resources.
The state has several armed separatist group of the Baloch ethnicity, including the BLA, which demand greater autonomy from Islamabad and accuse the central government of exploiting their natural resources in an unjust manner. EFE
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