Reuters reported on  May 13, 2017 that ten laborers were gunned down in southwestern Pakistan on May 13, 2017, while working on link roads to connect outlying towns to the country's $57-billion Chinese "Belt and Road" initiative. The attack on the Pakistani laborers took place some 20 kilometres from the port city of Gwadar in Baluchistan province that forms the southern hub of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). A s senior levies official Muhammad Zareef said "All the laborers were shot at close range" and the shooters were travelling on a motorcycle. The killed and wounded men were working for the provincial government at two separate construction sites three kilometers apart along the same road. Two laborers wounded in the shootings were taken to hospital where one of them died from his injuries.  Officials said the sections of the road that the laborers were working on are not specific CPEC-funded projects, but part of a network of connecting roads that are part of the corridor. No group has admitted responsibility for the shootings but past attacks in the region have been carried out by separatists who view construction projects as a means to take over their land.

The shootings come a day after a suicide bomber targeting a Pakistani senator killed 26 people and injured 40, Baluchistan Home Minister Sarfraz Bugti said.