By Asif Shahzad
ISLAMABAD (Reuters) – Two Chinese nationals who were killed in an explosion near Pakistan’s Karachi international airport on Sunday worked for a power plant, Pakistan’s finance minister said on Tuesday.
It was the most serious attack against Chinese nationals in Pakistan since a suicide bomber killed five Chinese engineers working on a hydropower project in March, which prompted Beijing to call on Islamabad to implement more stringent security measures.
The Chinese embassy in Islamabad and Pakistan’s foreign ministry have described Sunday’s blast as a “terrorist attack”.
In a statement emailed to journalists, separatist militant group Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) claimed the explosion was a suicide attack carried out by them, using a vehicle-borne bomb.
Pakistani media has reported that nearly a dozen people were injured in the blast.
A top security official in Islamabad told Reuters on condition of anonymity that the latest attack was a security failure and that all senior staff responsible for Chinese security in Karachi had been removed from service.
Pakistan’s interior ministry is primarily responsible for the Chinese nationals’ security.
There has been little information released about the identities of the Chinese nationals who were killed in a highly secured area of the southern port city.
“They were engineers who belong to those IPPs (Independent Power Producers) with whom we were negotiating tariff revision,” Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said in a video statement broadcast by local TV news channels.
Pakistan has been renegotiating contracts with independent power producers to rein in electricity tariffs as households and businesses buckle under soaring energy costs.
The Chinese embassy said a convoy from the Port Qasim Electric Power Company was attacked near the airport.
The BLA is one of many separatist militant groups, which seeks independence for the province of Balochistan, located in Pakistan’s southwest and bordering Afghanistan and Iran.
In August, it launched coordinated attacks in the province, in which more than 70 people were killed.
BLA specifically targets Chinese interests – in particular the strategic port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, accusing Beijing of helping Islamabad exploit local resources. It has previously killed Chinese citizens working in the region and attacked Beijing’s consulate in Karachi.
The port is part of Beijing’s $65 billion investment in Pakistan’s road and infrastructure building called the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) under President Xi’s Belt and Road initiative.
(Reporting by Asif Shahzad; Editing by Ros Russell)
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