China urges ‘thorough investigation, severe punishment’ to Karachi killers

China on Monday urged Islamabad to investigate the Karachi blast in which two Chinese engineers were killed and a third was injured and ensure safety of its officials working in Pakistan.

A statement issued by the Beijing embassy urged Pakistani authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack and severely punish the killers, while at the same time taking practical measures to fully ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects”.

Beijing has repeatedly asked Islamabad to ensure the safety and security of Chinese nationals and its interests.  A massive blast on Sunday night that targeted a convoy of Chinese workers in Pakistan’s largest city killed two engineers in an attack claimed by a separatist group.

Sunday night’s attack comes a week before Pakistan hosts several heads of governments for a Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit, a bloc established by Russia and China to deepen ties with Central Asian states. Beijing is Islamabad’s closest regional ally, readily providing financial assistance to bail out its often struggling neighbour.

The CPEC has seen tens of billions of dollars funnelled into massive transport, energy and infrastructure projects – part of Beijing’s transnational “Belt and Road” scheme.

A suicide bomber killed five Chinese engineers working on the construction of a dam in northwestern Pakistan in March, temporarily pausing the project.  The attack was not claimed, but it came days after militants attempted to storm offices of the Gwadar deepwater port at the other end of the country, considered a cornerstone of Chinese investment in Pakistan.

In June 2020, Baloch insurgents targeted the Pakistan Stock Exchange, which is partly owned by Chinese companies, in the commercial capital of Karachi.  In 2019, gunmen stormed a luxury hotel in Balochistan province overlooking the flagship Chinese-backed deepwater seaport in Gwadar that gives strategic access to the Arabian Sea – killing at least eight people.