Pakistan’s military says a March suicide attack was planned in Afghanistan that killed five Chinese – The Diplomat

The Pakistani military said Tuesday that a suicide attack was planned in neighboring Afghanistan that killed five Chinese engineers and a Pakistani driver in March and that the attacker was an Afghan national.

At a news conference, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Ahmad Sharif said four men behind the March 26 attack in Bisham, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, had been arrested.

Sharif said the attack that killed Chinese engineers working on Pakistan’s largest Dasu dam was an attempt to damage the friendship between Pakistan and China. Thousands of Chinese are working on projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

Sharif also said that Pakistani Taliban, who have safe havens in Afghanistan, were behind a wave of attacks in Pakistan since January that killed 62 security personnel across the country.

He said the Afghan Taliban had reneged on their promises to the international community before coming to power and vowed that no one would be allowed to use Afghan soil to attack any country.

There was no immediate comment from the Afghan Taliban government, which has previously denied such allegations.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, is a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 as US and NATO troops were in the final phase Their withdrawal left the country after 20 years of war.

Sharif said Pakistan has solid evidence of the TTP’s involvement in the violence in the country.

Sharif also promised that no foreigner living in Pakistan would be allowed to remain without valid documents, and 563,639 Afghans living illegally have returned to Afghanistan since last year as Islamabad cracked down on illegal migrants. Pakistan justified the operation by claiming that foreign nationals – mostly Afghans – were responsible for a wave of terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

Sharif said the Pakistan military has completed 98 percent construction of a fence along the border with Afghanistan. He said 91 percent of a fence along the Iranian border had also been completed to control illegal movements, curb smuggling and prevent cross-border attacks by militants.

Afghanistan has never recognized the porous border that runs through the heartland of the Pashtuns, Afghanistan’s largest ethnic group.

The army spokesman also dismissed media reports about the possibility of an agreement or talks with the country’s jailed former prime minister Imran Khan or his party. Khan is serving several prison sentences for corruption, disclosure of official secrets and violations of the marriage law.