Pakistan must pay millions in compensation for five Chinese killed in suicide attack

Islamabad:

Pakistan has decided to pay $2.58 million to the families of five Chinese nationals killed in a suicide attack in the troubled northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa in March, a media report said today.

The five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver were killed when a suicide bomber slammed his explosive-laden car into another vehicle in the Bisham area of ​​the restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on March 26. The five Chinese were on their way to a construction site of the Dasu hydroelectric power plant in the Kohistan district of the same province.

The Economic Coordination Committee (ECC) of the Pakistani Cabinet decided on Thursday to pay $2.58 million to the families of the Chinese workers killed in the attack, the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported.

The approval of compensation for five Chinese workers of the China Gezhouba Group (contractor) at a rate of US$516,000 per head was made as a gesture of goodwill, the report said.

“The amount will be immediately transferred to the account of the Pakistani embassy in Beijing, from where it will be forwarded to the families of the deceased Chinese citizens through the appropriate channels,” the newspaper quoted a senior finance ministry official as saying.

The announcement of the compensation came ahead of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s upcoming visit to Beijing early next month to push forward the second phase of the so-called China-Pakistan Economic Corridor project, which has been stuck in a difficult phase for nearly five years.

Thousands of Chinese workers are working in Pakistan on several projects under the $60 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which runs through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)