Flames rise after a bomb detonated at the Sereena Hotel in Quetta, Pakistan on April 21, 2021.
Mazhar Chandio | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
A car bomb ripped through the parking lot of a luxury hotel in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta late Wednesday, killing four people and injuring 11, officials said.
The Chinese ambassador to Pakistan was staying at the hotel but was not there when the bomb exploded, Pakistani Interior Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmad said.
Provincial Interior Minister Ziaullah Lango said the envoy was okay.
“An explosion has shaken the Serena Hotel parking lot,” police officer Nasir Malik told Reuters, saying 11 people had been injured. A local civilian hospital official, Waseem Baig, said four people had died and that “several others are in critical condition.”
“A car full of explosives exploded in the hotel,” Ahmad told local ARY News TV.
The Pakistani Taliban have claimed responsibility for the bombing.
“It was a suicide bombing in which our suicide bomber used his car full of explosives in the hotel,” a spokesman for the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militant group wrote in a text message to a Reuters reporter.
According to a tweet from provincial government spokesman Liaquat Shahwani, Chinese Ambassador Nong Rong had met with Provincial Chief Minister Jam Kamal earlier in the day in the city.
Lango told reporters, “I just met him. He’s cheerful,” adding that the envoy would conclude his visit to Quetta on Thursday.
The Chinese Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.
The well-fortified hotel is located 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, where there has long been an uprising of local nationalists who want a greater share of the regional resources.
The province is home to the recently expanded Gwadar deep-water port, which is key to a planned $ 65 billion investment in China’s Belt and Road Initiative economic corridor.
It was not clear whether the envoy or members of his delegation were the target of the attack, but Chinese citizens and their interests in the region have previously been attacked by Taliban militants and nationalist insurgents.