Two suspected Pakistani militants behind 2021 attack on Chinese killed in shootout

LAHORE, Pakistan (Reuters) – Two militants involved in the 2021 attack that killed nine Chinese engineers were shot and killed in a shootout in a central Pakistani district on Friday, counter-terrorism officials said.

They said the militants who had been convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment were being moved out of a prison in Sahiwal district due to a threat when some men attacked the police van they were in.

Two of the five militants in the van were killed in cross-fire between police and the attackers, it said.

They two were masterminds of the attack that had killed a total of 13 people, including the nine Chinese engineers, near a hydropwer plant in Dadu in northern Pakistan in July 2021.

Pakistan’s main cities, especially Islamabad, are on a high alert ahead of the Shanghai Cooperation Conference (SCO) which is scheduled to be held in the capital on Oct 15-16.

Pakistan is seeking to curb all movements of Chinese nationals during the summit because of the risk that they could be attacked.

The shootout came within hours of an attack that killed over 20 miners in southwestern Balochistan province, the hotbed for separatist militants, including the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which has been attacking Chinese nationals and their interests in the region.

(Reporting by Mubasher Bukhari in Lahore and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; writing by Sakshi Dayal; Editing by Jacqueline Wong and Raju Gopalakrishnan)