Hours before Monday’s arrest, Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif expressed his condolences over the April killings in a telephone conversation with his Chinese counterpart, Li Keqiang, and promised maximum security for Chinese workers in Pakistan.
Thousands of Chinese engineers, specialists and workers have been working on projects launched in Pakistan in recent years for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, part of China’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.
Meanwhile, a female pedestrian was killed and 13 others were injured in a roadside bomb blast near a police van in the southern port city of Karachi on Monday, senior police official Ali Mardan Khoso said.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, but suspicion fell on separatist militants in Balochistan who were waging a low-level insurgency there.