On Tuesday, officials claimed, an explosion swept through a van parked on a university campus in southern Pakistan, killing three Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver. Separatist militants claimed credit for the incident, which was carried out by a female suicide bomber.

According to university spokesman Mohammad Farooq, the attack at the University of Karachi also injured a fourth Chinese national and a Pakistani guard escorting the vehicle.

Ghulam Nabi Memon, Karachi's police chief, said the early investigation indicates a suicide bomber carried out the incident. He stated that closed-circuit television footage from the scene showed a woman dressed entirely in the female burqa stepping up to the van immediately following an explosion.

Among the Chinese killed were the director of the Chinese-built Confucius Institute, which offers graduate programs in the Chinese language, and two teachers.

The Baluchistan Liberation Army, a militant group based in a neighboring Baluchistan province, has previously carried out attacks against Chinese nationals.

Following Tuesday's incident, the group released a statement identifying the bomber as Shari Baluch or Bramsh, claiming she was the organization's first female bomber. According to the report, the attack marked "a new chapter in the history of Baluch resistance."

Baluchistan has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency led by armed Baluch organizations seeking increased autonomy and a more significant part of the region's natural resources, if not outright independence from Islamabad.

However, in the past, the Pakistani Taliban have targeted Chinese interests. Last July, the group — also known as the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan — claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus in Pakistan's northeastern Khyber Pukhtunkhwa region that killed nine Chinese people. Additionally, four Pakistanis were killed in that attack.

Pakistani Taliban are distinct from the Afghan Taliban, their friends in neighboring Afghanistan.

Thousands of Chinese nationals live and work in Pakistan, most of them as part of Beijing's multibillion-dollar "One Belt One Road" initiative, which aims to connect the south and central Asia to the Chinese capital.

A critical route connecting Pakistan's southern port of Gwadar in southwestern Baluchistan province to northwest China's Xinjiang region is part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. The project encompasses several infrastructural and energy projects.