Pakistani officials have taken into custody eleven militants suspected of involvement in the deadly March suicide attack on Chinese engineers. In response to these arrests, Beijing has urged Islamabad to persist with the investigation.
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stated on Monday that China places great importance on the progress made by Pakistan in this matter.
“China supports Pakistan in continuing to get to the full bottom of what happened and hunting down and bringing to justice all the perpetrators,” she said.
The suicide attack on March 26 resulted in the deaths of five Chinese engineers and their Pakistani driver as they were traveling to work at the largest dam at Dasu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
Pakistani officials reported that a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle filled with explosives into their convoy. Pakistan has accused Afghanistan of being a launching pad for militants who carry out attacks on its soil, an accusation the Taliban has repeatedly denied.
Islamabad stated that the suicide bomber responsible for the attack on the Chinese engineers was an Afghan national.
“The attack on the Chinese engineers at Shangla (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa) is not the only attack. There are several attacks that are carried out by Afghan nationals in Pakistan, their dead bodies were there, and they were identified as Afghans,” Abdullah Khan, an Islamabad-based researcher for the Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies, told VOA.
Mounting security threats have prompted Pakistani officials to introduce security protocols requiring residential addresses of Chinese nationals and information about their mobility in the country.
Baloch separatist groups and Islamist militants have been targeting Chinese interests and personnel in Pakistan’s resources-rich southwestern Balochistan and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.
Militants associated with Baloch separatist groups have claimed responsibility for past attacks on Chinese nationals and interests in Pakistan. Earlier this month, the Pakistani army reported conducting 100 intelligence-based operations daily to combat terrorism.
In 2021, an attack on a bus carrying workers to the same hydropower project killed 13 people, including at least nine Chinese nationals. Two Islamist militants were sentenced to death for that attack.
No group has claimed responsibility for the latest suicide attack on Chinese engineers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. Pakistan announced on May 23 that the government will pay $2.58 million to the victims of the March attack.
Pakistan hosts many Chinese workers involved in Beijing’s projects under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which involves $62 billion in Chinese investments. However, Pakistani officials have noted that the pace of these projects has slowed in recent years.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif is set to visit Beijing in the first week of June to persuade China to revive CPEC, according to media reports.
