Car bombing at hotel in southwest Pakistan kills 4, wounds 11

QUETTA: A car bomb blast ripped through a luxury hotel's parking area in the southwestern Pakistani city of Quetta, killing four people and wounding 11, officials said.

China's ambassador to Pakistan was staying at the hotel, but was not there when the bomb exploded, said Pakistan's interior Minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmad.

"An explosion has rocked the parking area of Serena Hotel," police official Nasir Malik told Reuters, saying 11 people had been wounded. An official at a local civil hospital, Waseem Baig, said four people had died, and "several others are in critical condition."

"A car that was full of explosives exploded in the hotel," Ahmad told local ARY News TV.

The Pakistan Taliban claimed the bombing.

"It was a suicide attack in which our suicide bomber used his explosives-filled car in the hotel," a Taliban spokesman wrote in a text message to a Reuters reporter.

China's ambassador was at a function when the bomb exploded, the minister said.

The Chinese Embassy did not respond to a request for comment.

Ambassador Nong Rong had earlier in the day met provincial Chief Minister Jam Kamal in the city, according to a tweet from the provincial government spokesman, Liaquat Shahwani.

The hotel is next to the Iranian consulate and the provincial governor's house. Quetta is the capital of southwestern Balochistan province which has long been the scene of a low-level insurgency by local nationalists.

The province is home to the newly expanded Gwadar deep-water port that is key to a planned $65 billion investment in China's Belt and Road Initiative economic corridor.