Mastermind of Karachi airport suicide attack arrested, says Pakistan police

Karachi: The alleged mastermind of the Karachi airport suicide attack and four suspected accomplices, including a female bomber, have been arrested, police said on Monday.

The five militants were arrested last week from different parts of the restive Balochistan province, Umar Khatab, a senior official of the Sindh Counter-Terrorism Department (CTD), said.

The blast on 6th October killed four people including the two Chinese engineers and wounded 17 others.

Two Chinese nationals were killed and 17 people injured in the suicide attack by the banned Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) that targeted a convoy of Chinese workers near the Jinnah International Airport on October 6.

“We were able to identify those responsible for the attack through face verification and one of them is a trained female militant and bomber,” Khatab said.

He said the female militant had accompanied the attack's mastermind in an SUV, witnessing the suicide bomber targeting the vehicle, carrying the Chinese nationals returning from a port industrial site on the outskirts of Karachi, at the airport signal.

Khatab said separatist groups have started recruiting young females to carry out terror attacks and recalled that some years back a female suicide bomber hit a van inside the Karachi University, killing Chinese teachers.

Among outlawed separatist groups in Balochistan, the BLA (Majeed group) has been the most active in carrying out terror attacks, including the recent suicide bombing at Quetta Railway Station last week that killed 27 people and injured dozens.

Balochistan, bordering Iran and Afghanistan, is home to a long-running violent insurgency. Baloch insurgent groups have previously carried out several attacks targeting CPEC projects.

The BLA accuses China and Islamabad of exploitation of the resource-rich province, a charge rejected by the authorities. It has fought a long-running insurgency for a separate homeland.

The group in the last two years carried out similar suicide bomb attacks in Karachi targeting foreign nationals.

The BLA in March this year claimed responsibility for an attack on a Pakistani naval air base near China-run Gwadar port.

In April 2022, the group killed three Chinese tutors and a Pakistani driver in a suicide bombing near Karachi University's Confucius Institute.

In November 2018, gunmen killed at least four people in an attack on the Chinese consulate in Karachi.