A car packed with explosives went off near a bus that was carrying Chinese engineers to a port project in remote southwestern Pakistan yesterday, killing three of them and injuring 11 other people, police and hospital officials said.
The attack occurred just after 9am as the bus was taking at least 12 Chinese to the Gawadar port, about 500km west of Karachi, near the border with Iran, said Sattar Lasi, the chief of police in Gawadar.
"A car was parked near the port and it exploded as the bus reached the port," Lasi said.
"This is clearly terrorism. The aim was to terrorize the Chinese working at the Gawadar port," said Lal Jan, a police deputy superintendent in Gawadar.
Shoaib Suddle, the police chief in Baluchishtan province, said it appeared the bomb was set off by remote control, but that authorities were still looking into the possibility of a suicide attack.
Lasi said authorities had not found the remains of any bomber inside the white Suzuki car, although the force of the blast would have made it hard to determine whether someone was inside. Only the skeleton of the car remained, and the bus was also heavily damaged, with windows shattered and metal twisted, he said.
Ghafoor Baluch, a fisherman who lives near the scene of the attack, said the explosion shook the walls of his home.
"We saw pieces of metal from the car strewn on the beach and stuck in nearby trees," he said.
The explosion left a 1m crater and smashed the front of the bus, he said.
Eleven people were injured -- nine of them Chinese, Lasi said. The others were a Pakistani driver and security guard.
The motive for the attack was not immediately clear. Islamic militant groups have targeted foreigners in the past, but never in such a remote part of the country.
Several nationalist groups have also expressed opposition to the project at Gawadar, which aims to develop a deep sea port that will ultimately provide a second option to the heavily trafficked Karachi port terminal.
China is Pakistan's most important ally and one of its chief trading partners.
The Chinese Embassy was closed yesterday, a holiday in Pakistan marking the birth of Islam's Prophet Muhammad, but a duty officer who identified himself as Cai said the embassy was monitoring the situation closely. He had no additional information.
The Chinese all worked for China Harbor Engineering Co in a project to develop the Gawadar seaport on the Arabian Sea. It was not clear how long they had been in the country.
The company asked Pakistani authorities to increase security, but said it had no plans to suspend work on the project.
"We will continue our work at Gawadar port," said Sun Xiyo, general manager of the company in Gawadar.
He said more than 400 Chinese engineers and construction workers are in the Pakistani town working on the project.
Masood Ahmed, a doctor at the state-run Civil Hospital in Gawadar, said three of the injured were in serious condition.
Pakistan has been relatively peaceful in recent months, but there have been some close calls. A powerful bomb was found and defused outside the US Consulate in Karachi in March.
On May 8, 2002, a suicide bomber attacked a bus carrying French engineers outside the Sheraton Hotel in Karachi, killing 11.
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