This Tuesday, a new attack against Chinese interests in Pakistan has claimed the lives of five Chinese engineers and their Pakistani driver. The vehicle in which they were traveling was hit by a car loaded with explosives on a high mountain road, in the province of Khyber-Pakhtunjua. As a result of the explosion, the victims’ minibus plunged to the bottom of the ravine, engulfed in flames. The suicide bomber also perished.
The vehicle was part of a convoy transporting Chinese workers from Islamabad to the Basu dam and hydroelectric power station in the foothills of the Karakoram mountain range. This has been under construction since 2018 and should begin producing electricity in a few months, to become the country’s first source of energy.
This is the second attack against this construction site and construction company, Gezhouba, in less than three years. In 2021, fourteen workers were injured on the same road, ten of them Chinese. No one claimed responsibility for that massacre and the Islamabad government, then in the hands of Imran Khan, initially tried to disguise it as an accident. Months later, however, a court sentenced to death two men accused of planning the attack.
This caused the interruption of the works, which only resumed six months later, under greater security measures and with Islamabad promising large compensations to the 28 injured and the families of the deceased.
This time, the Pakistani government has reacted quickly and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has gone to the Chinese embassy to present his condolences. Beijing has called for a “thorough investigation” and “severe punishment” for those responsible.
The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which consists of several infrastructure projects, is strategic for both countries, but above all for Beijing, which longs to connect its Xinjian province with the Arabian Sea, through which most of its imports circulate. of crude oil.
“Once again, the adversaries of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor have conspired to disrupt it with a cowardly act, but they will never succeed,” Sharif proclaimed before the Chinese ambassador, without explaining which country or countries he was referring to. The attacks, in any case, have nothing to do with the Taliban in Afghanistan, whose regime maintains good relations with Beijing.
The hydroelectric project in La Diana, whose total cost will exceed four billion euros, has the World Bank as its first source of financing.
The attacked convoy was following the course of the Indus River when it was attacked, around 1:30 in the afternoon, local time, in the Shangla district, near the town of Bisham. One of the five Chinese victims is a woman.
This is the second attack in Pakistan against Chinese targets in just a few days. Last week, the port authority of Gwadar – a Chinese-built and managed port facing the Arabian Sea – was assaulted by a commando of the Balochistan Liberation Army. All militants were eliminated and at least two soldiers lost their lives.
Likewise, yesterday Monday night, in Turbat, in the same Beluchi province, another attack by the same organization targeted one of the four air bases of the Pakistan Navy, PNS Siddique. All the assailants died in the attempt and one of the soldiers also died while repelling the attack.
