The story appears on

Page A2

April 23, 2021

GET this page in PDF

Free for subscribers

View shopping cart

Related News

Home » World

Chinese envoy escapes suicide blast in Quetta

THE Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility yesterday for a deadly suicide blast at a luxury hotel hosting the Chinese ambassador to Pakistan in the southwest of the country, as officials raised the death toll to five. 

China said it strongly condemned the attack, although the Taliban said Pakistan security officials were the target of the blast. 

The bomber detonated the explosives on Wednesday while inside a vehicle in the car park of the Serena Hotel, part of a five-star chain popular with diplomats and aid agencies, in the city of Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, police and the interior ministry said.

Pakistan is fighting several low-level insurgencies in the impoverished province, waged by Islamist, separatist and sectarian groups.

“The suicide bomber hit the security officials exactly as it was planned,” the spokesperson for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan said in a statement.

The country’s interior minister confirmed a suicide bomber had carried out the attack, as he pinned the blame on a “foreign hand.” 

“Our agencies will fight the efforts which are being made in the neighboring country to reorganize the TTP,” said interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.

Pakistan frequently accuses India of using insurgent groups, including in Afghanistan, as proxy forces to wage a shadow war between the arch-rivals.

Describing the blast as a “terrorist attack,” China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in Beijing that ambassador Nong Rong was leading a delegation on a visit to Quetta on the same day. “When the attack occurred, the Chinese delegation was not in the hotel. Till present, no reports of casualties of Chinese citizens in the attack have been received.”

Gu Wenliang, agriculture commissioner at China’s embassy in Pakistan, told the Chinese newspaper Global Times that the bomb had detonated 10 minutes before their expected return.

“I was walking through the car park when I heard a sudden loud sound and the earth shook under my feet,” said Khuda Baksh, a guard at the hotel. “Everyone was running for their lives before I lost consciousness,” he said.

For years, the TTP have unleashed deadly attacks on urban centers across Pakistan from their bases along the Afghan border.




 

Copyright © 1999- Shanghai Daily. All rights reserved.Preferably viewed with Internet Explorer 8 or newer browsers.

沪公网安备 31010602000204号

Email this to your friend