Agencies

Karachi, May 3:

A car bomb in southwest Pakistan today killed three Chinese engineers helping to build a multi-million dollar seaport and injured 11 others including two Pakistanis, police and hospital officials said. The attack was the first against foreigners in Pakistan since a spate of bloody strikes in 2002 by Islamic militants furious at the United States-led attacks on Afghanistan’s Taliban regime and Pakistan’s support of the campaign. Today’s bombing occurred at around 9:00 am as 12 Chinese engineers travelled in a van to work at Gwadar, an Arabian Sea coastal town near the Iranian border some 480 km west of Karachi.

A car parked on the side of the road blew up as the workers’ van passed, said Sattar

Lasi, the chief of police in Gawadar.

The bomb may have been detonated by remote control, police said. They were waiting for bomb disposal experts to determine the type of explosives. Police ruled out a suicide attack, saying they had found no trace of anyone sitting in the car which exploded. Eleven people were injured - nine of them Chinese, Lasi said. The injured were taken to the Gwadar Civil Hospital. “Three Chinese are dead while six others are seriously injured,” hospital director Masood Ahmed told AFP by telephone.