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Karachi Bombing Was Not First Attack On Chinese People In Pakistan, Read About Earlier Attacks

The Tuesday's bombing has been said to be the latest attack targeted at Chinese nationals in Pakistan.

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The van that was attacked by the suicide bomber
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Three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed on Monday in a suidice bombing inside University of Karachi.

A van near the China-built Confucius Institute inside the university was targeted by a woman suicide bomber. The institute’s director, a Chinese national, was among the dead. 

The bombing has been said to be the latest attack targeted at Chinese nationals in Pakistan. There are thousands of Chinese nationals in Pakistan, many of whom work in several projects under the China Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative. 

China has invested upto $62 billion in the CPEC, which links Gwadar port in Balochistan to China’s Xinjiang. Balochistan has an active insurgency against the Pakistani state that’s also believed to have acquired an anti-China stance. 

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Here are some of the previous attacks in Pakistan in which Chinese nationals were targeted:

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa attack, July 2021

Twelve people were killed when a bus exploded and fell into a ravine near a hydropower plant in the Upper Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Nine of those killed were Chinese nationals.

The Dasu plant is part of the CPEC.

Initially, there were conflicting reports about the incident. An adviser to Pakistan’s prime minister had called it an attack but the country foreign office called it an accident out of mechanical failure. However, the Chinese government treated the incident as a bombing. 

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Reuters at the time reported four officials, including the top provincial police officer, as saying that the incident was an attack.

Two weeks later, another Chinese worker was shot and wounded in Karachi.

Attack on Karachi consulate, November 2018 

The Chinese consulate in Karachi was attacked in November 2018 in which four people were killed, none of whom was a Chinese national. 

Three gunmen attacked the consulate but were killed in a confrontation with the security forces. Two of the four killed were policemen posted at the consulate. 

The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group from the restive Balochistan province, took responsibility for the attack. The same group took responsibility for Tuesday’s bombing inside University of Karachi.

Abduction and execution in Balochistan, 2017

Two Chinese nationals, a man and a woman, were abducted in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, in May 2017.

Just like the Chinese nationals killed in Tuesday’s bombing, the two abducted in May 2017 were also teaching the Chinese language to the locals. 

Later in October that year, the Chinese government that the two had been executed by the terrorist group ISIS. 

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