Three teachers from China and a driver have been killed in a suspected suicide bombing near a Chinese language learning center in Pakistan's largest city, Karachi.
The four were in a van near the University of Karachi's Confucius Institute when the blast ripped through the vehicle on Tuesday evening, Pakistan's Interior Minister Rana Sana Ullah told CNN. The Baloch Liberation Army , a militant separatist group from Pakistan's southwestern province of Balochistan, claimed responsibility for what it says was a suicide attack in a statement shared with CNN. A fourth Chinese teacher was injured in the blast, China's Foreign Ministry said.
But in recent years terrorist attacks targeting Chinese nationals and their interests in Pakistan have alarmed Beijing.Last year, 13 people, including 9 Chinese nationals, were killed in an explosion that hit a bus convoy carrying Chinese engineers to a hydro-power plant construction site in northern Pakistan. Islamabad blamed that attack on the Pakistani Taliban, operating out of Afghanistan.