Karachi, Pakistan:

A massive blast on a road near the airport of Pakistan’s largest city killed two Chinese nationals, Beijing’s embassy said Monday, after a separatist militant group claimed an attack in the area.

An AFP journalist heard the explosion in Pakistan’s southern megacity of Karachi around 11:00 pm (1800 GMT) Sunday.

The regional government of southern Sindh province said on X that a “tanker” had exploded on the airport motorway.

The separatist militant group the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said in a statement that it had “targeted a high-level convoy of Chinese engineers and investors” coming from Karachi’s airport.

Beijing’s embassy to Pakistan said in a statement on Monday that two Chinese citizens had been killed in a “terror attack” on a convoy of personnel from the Chinese-funded Port Qasim power project.

The attack also left one Chinese and several Pakistani citizens wounded, the embassy said.

The embassy urged authorities to “conduct a thorough investigation of the attack and severely punish the killers, while at the same time taking practical measures to fully ensure the safety of Chinese citizens, institutions and projects”.

The BLA is a separatist militant group advocating for the autonomy of Pakistan’s Balochistan province, the largest but poorest region of the country.

The group has regularly targeted Chinese nationals, claiming ethnic Baloch locals are not receiving their fair share of wealth extracted by foreign investors.

Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority said flights from Karachi were continuing “as usual” and “agencies are investigating the cause at the scene of the accident/explosion”.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A vehicle is seen on fire at the site of an explosion that caused injures and destroyed vehicles at outside the Karachi airport, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 6, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

A massive blast outside Karachi Airport in Pakistan on Sunday injured at least eight people and destroyed several vehicles, officials said.

Police and the provincial government said a tanker exploded outside the airport, which is Pakistan’s biggest.

But the provincial home minister, Zia Ul Hassan, told local TV station Geo that it was an attack targeting foreigners.

A Home Ministry official told the Associated Press that it was an attack on Chinese nationals, one of whom was injured. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Thousands of Chinese workers are in Pakistan, most of them involved in Beijing’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative that connects south and central Asia with the Chinese capital.

Videos showed flames engulfing cars and a thick column of smoke rising from the scene. There was a heavy military deployment at the site, which was cordoned off.

Police surgeon Dr. Sumayya Tariq said one of the casualties was in critical condition and that four of them were security guards.

Rahat Hussain, who works in the civil aviation department, said the blast was so big that it shook the airport’s buildings.