Flames rise after a bomb exploded on April 21, 2021 at the Sereena Hotel in Quetta, Pakistan.
Mazhar Chandio | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
A car bomb had exploded at an Iraqi police recruiting center at Kisak, west of Pakistan, killing at least four people and wounding 11 others, officials said on Wednesday.
The Chinese ambassador to Pakistan was staying at the hotel but was not there when the bomb exploded, Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said.
Provincial Interior Minister Ziaullah Lango said the envoy was good.
An explosion shook the parking lot of the Serena Hotel, “Nasir Malik, a police officer, told Reuters that 11 people had been injured. An official at a local civilian hospital, Waseem Baig, said four people were killed and a number of others were in critical condition.
“A car full of explosives exploded inside the hotel,” Ahmad told local ARY News TV.
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the bombing.
“It was a suicide attack in which our suicide bomber used his car with explosives in the hotel,” a spokesman for the militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) wrote in a text message to a Reuters reporter.
Chinese Ambassador Nong Rong met with provincial prime minister Jam Kamal in the city earlier in the day, according to a tweet from provincial government spokesman Liaquat Shahwani.
Lango told reporters: ‘I just met him. He’s in a great mood, ‘and the envoy would complete his visit to Quetta on Thursday.
The Chinese embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
The well-fortified hotel is next to the Iranian consulate and the provincial parliament building. Quetta is the capital of the mineral-rich southwestern province of Balochistan bordering Iran and Afghanistan, which has long been the scene of a low-level uprising by local nationalists, who want more share in local resources.
The province is home to the newly expanded Gwadar deepwater port, which is key to a planned $ 65 billion investment in China’s Belt and Road Initiative economy.
It was not clear whether the envoy or members of his delegation were a target of the attack, but Chinese citizens and their interests in the region had been attacked before by Taliban militants and nationalist insurgents.