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THE Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility today for a deadly bomb blast that killed at least five people at a luxury hotel in the country’s south-western Balochistan province.
The Chinese ambassador was a guest at the Serena hotel at the time, but the group said that it had targeted Pakistani security officials.
“The suicide bomber hit the security officials exactly as it was planned,” a spokesperson for Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) said in a statement.
Describing the blast as a “terrorist attack,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in Beijing that the Chinese delegation had not been present when the bomb exploded some 10 minutes before they were due to arrive.
Prime Minister Imran Khan condemned the attack and said that security officials were on full alert.
“We will not allow this monster to re-emerge,” he pledged.
The attack came soon after the Tehreek-i-Labbaik Pakistan party staged a week of violent protests demanding the expulsion of the French ambassador after President Emmanuel Macron defended a satirical magazine’s right to republish cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed.
The TTP backed the protests in a statement published earlier this week.