At least three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver have been killed in a suicide attack believed to have been carried out by a separatist group on the campus of a state-run university in southern Pakistan.
In the city of Karachi, a woman suicide bomber affiliated with the Baloch Liberation Army targeted a vehicle on Tuesday, causing the casualties, the group said.
Muqadas Haider, a police official, told reporters that three of the deceased were Chinese teachers; two of them women.
At least three others were wounded in the incident near the gate of the China-built Confucius Institute, a Chinese language learning center located inside the University of Karachi.
The “Baloch Liberation Army accepts the responsibility for today’s self-sacrificing attack on Chinese in Karachi”, the separatist group’s spokesperson, Jeeyand Baloch, said in a statement published in English on Telegram.
The mission was the first to be carried out by a female operative, he added.
Deadly attack
Closed-circuit television footage from the site showed a person in the burqa covering head to toe walking up to the van struck by the explosion, Karachi police chief Ghulam Nabi Memon had said earlier.
Television footage showed plumes of smoke billowing high from the van as security forces cordoned off the area. The explosion also damaged motorcycles parked nearby, as well as windowpanes of buildings in the vicinity.
The Baloch separatists usually attack the army, government officials, gas projects and Chinese interests. They have stepped up attacks in recent months.
All-weather allies Beijing and Islamabad cooperate in the multi-billion dollar China Pakistan Economic Corridor project, which the Baloch insurgents see as an attempt to steal their resources.
Signed in 2014, the $64 billion projects, part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, aims to connect mainland China to Gwadar port in Balochistan.
