Pakistan police link deadly attacks on Chinese workers to Taliban affiliate’s ‘broken switch’ terror cell

Investigators have found evidence linking last month’s fatal bombing on the Karakoram Highway to Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan’s ‘Button Kharab’ cell

The group is also suspected to be behind a 2021 attack, using a second-hand Japanese car from Afghanistan, that killed nine Chinese Dasu dam workers

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Pakistani security officials inspect the scene of a suicide bomb attack on Chinese nationals in Bisham, Pakistan, on March 26. Photo: EPA-EFE

Published: 6:00pm, 13 Apr 2024

Police investigations into a vehicular suicide bombing that killed five Chinese nationals in Pakistan’s northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province last month have uncovered evidence linking it to an identical attack in the area carried out in July 2021.

Both attacks, which targeted employees of China Gezhouba Group Co (CGGC) working on a dam, are believed to have been carried out by the same faction of the Pakistani Taliban – led by militants originally from the Kohistan region – three senior police officers told This Week In Asia on condition of anonymity as they are not allowed to speak to the media.

Suicide bombers in both cases detonated explosives-laden cars as a convoy of security escort vehicles and buses carrying workers from the Dasu hydropower project attempted to overtake them on the Karakoram Highway, the sole overland link between Pakistan and China’s Xinjiang region.

Nine Chinese nationals were killed in the previous attack on the highway in July 2021.

Both bombing were carried out using second-hand Japanese cars – a Honda Accord in 2021 and a Suzuki Vitz last month – driven over the border from Afghanistan.

Using a SIM card recovered from the site of the attack on March 26, police traced the suicide bomber’s movements from Khost city in eastern Afghanistan to the Chaman border crossing in Pakistan’s western Balochistan province.

Pakistani soldiers check documents as people enter Pakistan at the border with Afghanistan in Chaman, Pakistan, last month. The suicide bomber is believed to have driven his explosives-laden car through several checkpoints without it once being searched. Photo: EPA-EFE

Police believe the attacker was an Afghan national, but are carrying out DNA testing to confirm their suspicions.