Chinese nationals attacked in Pak: China calls incident 'isolated'

A gunman opened fire on a car carrying two engineers in the southern port city of Karachi. It is the latest attack on Chinese nationals in Pakistan.

A Chinese engineer was shot and wounded in a gun attack in the southern port city of Karachi, Pakistan. A gunman opened fire on a car carrying two engineers, one of the engineers was hit four times, mostly in the arm, but was in stable condition. The other engineer and a Pakistani driver were uninjured in the attack.

Local police said two masked assailants riding on a motorcycle fired at a car carrying two Chinese nationals, who were working at a nearby factory in the city. “He is stable as fortunately, he wasn’t hit on any vital part of his body,” Javed Akbar Riaz, the police chief of Karachi’s southern district, told AFP.

Late in the evening Counter-Terrorism Department’s senior official Raja Umar Khattab said that the banned Balochistan Liberation Front’s spokesperson ‘Major’ Gohram through social media has claimed responsibility for the armed attack. A Pakistani security official said that investigators hadn’t been ready to confirm so far that the group conducted the attack.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian also confirmed the incident. “China is following this matter closely and the relevant case is still under investigation, This incident is an isolated case. We are fully confident that the Pakistani side will make sure the safety of Chinese nationals and assets in Pakistan,” said Zhao.

This shooting case comes just after weeks in which as many as 13 people, including nine Chinese nationals working on a dam project, were killed when their bus was hit by an explosion in Kohistan, northwest Pakistan, on July 14.