Bomb Blast in Pakistan Targets Chinese Engineer

A roadside bomb blast in Pakistan’s southwestern port city of Karachi Monday wounded a Chinese engineer and two others.

Senior police officer Rao Anwar told reporters the Chinese national sustained “minor injuries” and was apparently the target of the improvised explosive device.

Evidence collected from the site of the blast included a pamphlet denouncing “foreign control over Sindh’s natural resources,” Anwar said.

The local driver of the engineer and a passerby were also injured in the blast.

Karachi is the capital of the southwestern Sindh province where hundreds of Chinese professionals and nationals are working on various development projects.

Attacks on Chinese are not uncommon in Pakistan, but authorities said tighter security measures enacted in recent years for foreign nationals in the country have reduced the amount of violence.

There are thousands of Chinese nationals in Pakistan, some of them working on projects related to the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC).

The recently launched $46 billion CPEC is a package of power projects, and road and rail networks connecting China’s western Xinjiang region to Gwadar, the southern Pakistani deep sea port Beijing has built.

Pakistan’s military has prepared and deployed a Special Security Division of 15,000 personnel, mostly troops, to ensure protection of CPEC and Chinese nationals working on the project.