Chinese investigators arrived in Pakistan on Friday to join a probe into the killing of five Chinese nationals in a suicide attack, Pakistan’s interior ministry said, seeking to stem assaults threatening Islamabad’s drive to modernise the economy.
Tuesday’s incident was the third major attack in little over a week on China’s interests in the South Asian nation, where Beijing has invested more than $65 billion in infrastructure projects as part of its wider Belt and Road initiative.
Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi met the Chinese team of investigators at Beijing’s embassy and briefed them on the investigation so far, the statement said.
In late 2022, the two allied countries started a joint investigation into an attack that year on China’s nationals and its interests, which have seen a rise in recent months.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest attack, in which a suicide bomber rammed a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a hydropower project at Dasu in Pakistan’s northwest, killing six people.
The bombing followed a March 20 attack on a strategic port used by China in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where Beijing has poured billions of dollars into infrastructure projects, and a March 25 assault on a naval air base, also in the southwest. Both attacks was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the most prominent of several separatist groups in Balochistan.
Dasu, the location of a significant dam, has seen previous attacks. In 2021, a bus explosion claimed the lives of 13 people, nine of whom were Chinese, though no group took credit for the incident.
Chinese contractors stopped work on three hydropower projects after Tuesday’s attack because of security concerns, a government official said. They clarified that this was standard protocol in the wake of incidents of this nature.
In Pakistan, there are two different insurgencies. Islamist militants are in charge of the first, while ethnic separatists seeking to leave the nation and claim the government is unfairly dividing natural resources in the southwest province of Balochistan are behind the other.
Although ethnic militants seeking to force Beijing out of mineral-rich Balochistan pose the biggest threat to Chinese interests, that region is not near the site of Tuesday’s explosion.
Pakistan has set up a specialized military and police force, according to officials, to ensure security for Chinese endeavors.
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