Karachi:
One person was killed and 12 injured in a bomb attack late Thursday in Karachi, police said, just two weeks after a suicide bombing by a Pakistani separatist group killed four people in the same city.
The explosion ripped through the Saddar district, Pakistan’s most populous city, around 11 p.m. (1800 GMT).
“The initial investigation suggested that the explosive material was planted in a motorcycle parked near a garbage can,” said Sajjad Khan, a house officer at the local police station.
The target of the attack was not immediately announced.
Khan, however, said a Coast Guard vehicle was one of “several” vehicles damaged by the blast, while the person killed was a “passerby”.
Last month, a female suicide bomber killed four people, including three Chinese nationals, in an attack on a minibus carrying staff from a cultural program at Karachi University in Beijing.
The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a group fighting for independence in Pakistan’s largest and most impoverished province, has claimed responsibility for the April 26 strike.
China has made massive investments in energy and infrastructure in Balochistan under a $54 billion plan known as the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
However, the program has put Chinese citizens in the crosshairs of Baloch’s separatists, who say local residents are not seeing their fair share of the region’s natural resource riches.
In April 2021, a suicide attack on a luxury hotel housing the Chinese ambassador in Quetta, Balochistan’s provincial capital, killed four and injured dozens.
The ambassador was unharmed.
And in January, Baloch separatists killed three and injured 22 in a bomb attack on the eastern megacity of Lahore.
More broadly, Pakistan has witnessed an increase in militant attacks.
The Pakistan Institute of Conflict and Security Studies said the number of attacks rose 24 percent between March and April.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and has been published from a syndicated feed.)