A suicide blast targeting a convoy in the Bisham area of Shangla district on Tuesday resulted in at least six fatalities, including five Chinese nationals.
According to senior police official DIG Malakand Mohammad Ali Gandapur, the attack occurred when a suicide bomber, driving a vehicle laden with explosives, collided with the convoy transporting Chinese engineers from Islamabad to their Dasu camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province. Gandapur confirmed the deaths of the five Chinese individuals and their Pakistani driver.
Following the incident, law enforcement personnel arrived at the scene, securing the area and halting traffic to facilitate the investigation.
This attack echoes a tragic event from July 2021, where an explosion on a shuttle bus led to the deaths of nine Chinese nationals and four Pakistanis, injuring approximately two dozen others. The bus was en route to a construction site for the Dasu Hydropower Project in Kohistan district, also within Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.
The then Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi attributed the 2021 attack to a conspiracy by India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Afghanistan’s National Directorate of Security (NDS).
