July 14, 2021: A bomb blast targeting a bus in northern Pakistan has killed at least eight people, including six Chinese nationals.
When the attack took place on Wednesday morning, the vehicle was carrying more than 30 Chinese engineers to the site of the Dasu Dam project in Upper Kohistan. In Upper Kohistan, a bus carrying Chinese engineers has exploded. “Eight people lost their lives,” a senior administrative official in the Hazara region told Reuters news agency. The dead included two paramilitary security personnel who were traveling with the engineers. China’s Xinhua news agency quoted local media reports in Pakistan as saying the death toll was more than 10. About 39 people were injured in the blast, he said.
It was not immediately clear if the blast was the result of a roadside device or something planted inside the bus.
After the blast, the bus fell into a deep ravine and caused heavy damage. A Chinese engineer and a soldier are missing. “Rescue operations have been launched and the entire government machinery has been mobilized to rescue the injured by air ambulance,” a senior government official told Reuters on Wednesday on condition of anonymity. He said six Chinese civilians, a paramilitary force and a local were killed. Several people were injured, he said. A senior administrative official in the Hazara region told Reuters that the bus was carrying 30 Chinese engineers to the site of Dasu Dam in Upper Kohistan.
The Dasu Hydropower Project is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a $65Billion investment project under the Beijing Belt and Road Initiative, which aims to connect western China to the southern Pakistani port of Gwadar and on to the rest of the world.
Chinese engineers along with Pakistani construction workers have been working on the Dasu hydroelectric project and several others for several years in the region where the blast took place.
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