Taliban claims it was behind Quetta blast
THE Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility last Thursday (22) for a deadly suicide blast at a luxury hotel hosting the Chinese ambassador in the southwest of the country, as officials raised the death toll to five.
Beijing said it strongly condemned the attack, although the Taliban said Pakistan security officials were the target of the blast. The bomber detonated the explosives late last Wednesday (21) while inside a vehicle in the car park of the Serena hotel – part of a five-star chain popular with diplomats and aid agencies – in the city of Quetta, capital of Balochistan province, police and the interior ministry said.
“The suicide bomber hit the security officials exactly as it was planned,” the spokesperson for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said. The country’s interior minister confirmed a suicide bomber had carried out the attack, as he pinned the blame on a “foreign hand”.
“Our agencies will fight the efforts which are being made in the neighbouring country to reorganise the TTP,” said interior minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
Describing the blast as a “terrorist attack”, China’s foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in Beijing that the Chinese delegation was not present when the bomb detonated.
Gu Wenliang, agriculture commissioner at China’s embassy in Pakistan, told the Chinese newspaper Global Times that the bomb had detonated 10 minutes before their expected return.
For years the TTP unleashed deadly attacks on urban centres across Pakistan from their bases along the Afghan border, where they provided shelter to an array of global jihadist groups including Al Qaeda. But a massive military offensive launched in 2014 largely destroyed the group’s command and control structure, dramatically reducing insurgent violence throughout Pakistan.
“We will not allow this monster to re-emerge,” tweeted Pakistan’s prime minister Imran Khan. “We are on full alert and keeping an eye on all internal and external threats.”
Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and poorest province despite being rich in natural resources.
Resentment has been fuelled by billions of Chinese money flowing into the region through the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor – a key part of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – which locals say gave them little benefit as most new jobs go to outsiders.