The government in Pakistan's Punjab has told Chinese nationals residing in the province that it will not provide security to all of them and asked them to hire private security firms for the purpose, amidst frequent terror attacks in the country.

The directive from the home department of Punjab province was issued on Thursday, days after a deadly terror attack in a mosque in the police lines area of Peshawar city killed 101 people, mostly policemen.

"The Punjab Home Department has directed the Chinese nationals living in the province or working with private companies to hire private security companies of A category for their security," said the directive.

However, the Punjab government clarified that it would continue to provide security to Chinese nationals working on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) and other government-related projects in the province.

In the recent past, there have been several incidents in Pakistan in which Chinese nationals residing in the country for both government and private projects have been targeted.

China has been pressing Pakistan to provide fool-proof security to its nationals working in the country's restive regions.

In one such major incident in July 2021, ten Chinese nationals, mostly engineers, were killed and 26 others were seriously injured after a suicide attack on a bus that was ferrying them to the work site of the Dasu Hydropower Project in Kohistan district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

One of the major reasons why the number of Chinese workers in Pakistan has soared is the ambitious CPEC.

The CPEC, which connects Gwadar Port in Balochistan with China's Xinjiang province, is the flagship project of Chinese President Xi Jinping's ambitious Belt and Road Initiative.

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