BRING IT TO BEIJING:

China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in Pakistan is being targeted by an intensifying Balochistan insurgency that has so far claimed dozens of lives including three Chinese teachers last week in a daring suicide attack carried out by a female operative of the insurgent Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA).

Shari Baloch, a 31-year-old teacher, mother of two and a post-graduate philosophy student, blew herself up in front of a van carrying Chinese teachers near the Confucius Institute in the southern seaport city of Karachi on April 26, killing at least three Chinese nationals along with their Pakistani driver.

The banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) and its lethal guerrilla cell, Majeed Brigade, have claimed the responsibility for the suicide attack, which killed four in Karachi.

Hours after the BLA operative detonated the explosive-laden bag in front of the approaching van, the militant group told an international news channel that the female operative targeted the Confucius institute, which they believed was a "symbol of Chinese economic, cultural and political expansionism."

"It will give a clear message to China that its presence in Balochistan will not be tolerated," the BLA representative told the news channel. [...]

Many say that the attack marks a certain intensification of the decades-old Baloch insurgency that is locked in a violent stalemate with Islamabad and by association Beijing as the financier of various China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) related infrastructure projects in Balochistan province.

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