Pakistan will pay more than $2 million to the families of Chinese workers killed in a suicide bombing this year.
Five Chinese workers and their Pakistani driver were killed on March 26 when a suicide bomber rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into their convoy in the country’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The Economic Coordination Committee, Pakistan’s top economic body approved a $2.58 million package Thursday as compensation to the families of the foreign victims.
The ECC, presided over by Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb, also approved nearly $9,000 in compensation for the family of the slain Pakistani national.
“The ECC considered and approved proposals for Technical Supplementary Grants, including: $2.58 million and Rs. 2.5 million to the Ministry of Water Resources as the compensation packages for Chinese and local casualties at DASU Hydropower Project,” a statement on the finance ministry's website said.
The workers were traveling to the Chinese-funded Dasu hydropower project in the remote region of Kohistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when they came under attack in Bisham, in Shangla district, about four hours north of the capital. Islamabad.
Pakistan identified the attacker as an Afghan national and claimed the attack was planned in Afghanistan. Pakistan: Afghan-based terrorists planned suicide attack on Chinese engineers
Islamabad accuses the Afghan Taliban of allowing anti-Pakistan terrorists to operate on its soil, a charge the rulers in Kabul deny.
China has urged Pakistan to punish those involved in the attack and to ensure better security for its nationals present in the country. Thousands of Chinese are working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, a multibillion-dollar energy and infrastructure project under Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative.
As Pakistan pushes to revive the pace of the megaproject, Islamabad has assured China it has enhanced security protocols for the foreign workers.
In a visit to Dasu, days after the attack, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif vowed “fool-proof” security arrangements in a meeting with Chinese workers at the hydropower project.
“I will not rest until we have put in place the best possible security measures for your security. Not only in Dasu, [but] all over Pakistan,” Sharif said, adding that, this was his promise to the people of China, and to the Chinese leadership including President Xi Jinping.
A special military unit as well as local law enforcement are already responsible for the security of Chinese nationals in Pakistan.
Since the launch of CPEC, foreign workers have come under attack, mostly, by Baloch separatist groups who see the project as part of Pakistani state’s measures to rob the mineral-rich Balochistan province of its precious resources.
No group, however, claimed responsibility for the attack in March that occurred far from Balochistan. The banned Islamist militant outfit Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan - an ideological offshoot of the Afghan Taliban - has a foothold in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.
In 2021, an attack on a bus carrying workers to the same hydropower project killed 13 people including at least nine Chinese nationals. Pakistan compensated their families as well.
Two alleged Islamist militants were sentenced to death for that attack.
