A female engineer was among the five Chinese nationals killed in the Besham attack, revealed the second report submitted by the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) police to the federal government on Sunday.
A vehicle-borne suicide bomber targeted a convoy of Chinese engineers in the remote Besham area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa on March 26. The Chinese engineers were en route from Islamabad to their camp in Dasu – the district headquarters of the Upper Kohistan district of K-P.
Their vehicle was hit by an explosive-laden vehicle, coming from the opposite direction, near Lahore Nala on the Karakoram Highway. The attack had forced Power China and the China Gezhouba Company to suspend work on two dam projects. Preliminary findings from the report state that the vehicle transporting the foreign engineers was not up-armoured and lacked protection against bullets or explosions.
The report added that aerial photography of the incident site has been completed and the bus targeted by the suicide bomber was at a distance of around 15 feet from the second bus and the explosion threw it off the road into the 300-foot-deep ravine.
The Besham police station is situated approximately six kilometres from the site of the attack, while Dasu Dam is about 77 kilometres away, according to the report.
The report also stated that CCTV cameras were installed inside all vehicles in the Chinese convoy and the moment of the attack was captured through one such CCTV camera. The K-P police have recovered pieces of the vehicle utilized by the suicide bomber.
Yesterday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had ordered action against five officials over their “negligence” in light of an inquiry report on the suicide attack on March 26. Earlier, Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif instructed a thorough joint investigation into the Besham terrorist attack. A joint investigation team was formed to probe the attack.
Later, the premier decided that he would review the meetings conducted regarding the security situation in the country in general and the security of the Chinese nationals working on different projects across the country in particular every month. Hundreds of Chinese people are employed at the Dasu and Diamer Bhasha dam construction sites. Operations by Power China have resumed at Diamer Bhasha.
