ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s military said on Wednesday night that its forces had killed all the “terrorists” who had hijacked the Jaffar Express train on Tuesday in the country’s restive southwestern Balochistan province and freed the remaining hostages, numbering 300. The slain militants included suicide bombers taken out by snipers while seated amidst hostages.
Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) director-general Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry was quoted by Dawn as telling a private TV channel that the operation to clear the train was over but that “21 hostages” had “fallen victim to the barbarism” of Baloch Liberation Army militants. No passenger was injured in the final operation to clear the train’s bogies, he said.
Earlier in the day, security forces had claimed they had rescued at least 190 passengers and killed 30 militants since the hijacking of the train with more than 450 people on board by BLA separatists.
“Snipers of security forces sent the suicide bombers to hell and then began clearing (out the train) bogie by bogie,” Lt Gen Chaudhry said. Asked whether he was confirming the operation had ended with all attackers killed, the DG ISPR said: “Yes, all present terrorists there have been sent to hell and their total number was 33.”
He said that the attackers had placed the hostages in groups with suicide bombers sitting amongst them. “The suicide bombers were taken out by security forces snipers,” Lt Gen Chaudhry said. “The terrorists remained in contact with their facilitators and mastermind based in Afghanistan via satellite phone during the clearance operation,” he added.
The military spokesperson said units from the Pakistan Air Force, Special Services Group, army and Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force, took part in the operation.
A survivor freed earlier by the militants said the attackers had executed several soldiers — many of the passengers were military — on the spot, while a railway police officer whose Baluch ethnicity saved his life claimed many people, both army personnel and civilians, were gunned down by the militants.
The BLA had issued a statement on Wednesday that its men would begin executing “5 hostages every hour” if its prisoner exchange demand was not met within their deadline of 48 hours. It had said Pakistan’s govt was not taking its demands seriously and was trying to free hostages through military action. “BLA warns the enemy that if the Pakistan army commits any further aggression, even if a single bullet is fired, 10 more personnel will be eliminated.”
Authorities, meanwhile, had dispatched empty wooden coffins from Quetta railway station Wednesday afternoon, expecting casualties as forces moved ahead with efforts to retake control of the train.
The unprecedented hostage situation began on Tuesday near Mashkaf Tunnel, about 157 km from Quetta, when the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic Baloch separatist group, attacked the Jaffar Express and took more than 450 passengers hostage, including security personnel. The nine-bogie train was traveling north from Quetta, Balochistan, to Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, when it came under bomb and gun attack on Tuesday.
Records at Quetta railway station revealed that at least 150 of those on the train were members of the security forces, with several of them accompanied by their families.
Muhammad Ishaq, one of the survivors, said the attackers started to release some Balochistan residents, as well as women, children and elderly passengers, on Tuesday evening. “I was freed when I told them that I was a resident of Turbat city in Balochistan,” he said.
Survivors described chaotic scenes in which militants checked the national identity cards of passengers, separated men from women, divided them into groups, and executed several soldiers on the spot.
The Baluch railway police officer freed by the militants told media that the train’s security personnel — four railway police officers and two paramilitary force soldiers — tried to engage the militants after the first explosion but their ammunition ran out within an hour.
When the militants felt there was no fire in return, they came down from the surrounding mountains and started taking passengers off the train, the official said, adding there were hundreds of them.
“They (militants) then kept pushing Punjabis, Sindhis, Pathans, Baloch, everyone aside one by one and, in this way, they formed many groups,” he said, adding the militants tied the hands of military personnel.
Balochistan’s former CM and seasoned politician Akhtar Mengal said there is no area left in the province where the govt can claim to have control. “They have lost this war,” he posted on X.
“We and those before us had warned about it, but instead of taking our words seriously, the authorities used force, ridiculed the people, and ramped up looting and massacres,” Mengal said. The veteran politician alleged that every govt has been equally responsible for the Baloch genocide. “This (genocide) is the only issue on which all institutions and all govts have been on the same page, and instead of admitting their mistakes, they have an old habit of blaming others,” the politician added. “The federal govt, political parties, the judiciary and the military establishment should understand that now the matter is neither in our nor their control,” he warned.
The incident drew worldwide condemnations and calls for the release of the travellers taken hostage. “We strongly condemn the attack on the Jaffar Express train, and the hostage-taking of passengers in Kacchi, Balochistan, claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, a US specially designated global terrorist group,” the US embassy in Islamabad posted on X.
China also denounced the attack and vowed to continue its firm support to Pakistan in combating terrorism, maintaining solidarity and social stability and protecting the safety of civilians. Balochistan’s strategic importance, heightened by China’s Belt and Road Initiative projects, like Gwadar port, underscores the broader implications of this ongoing conflict in the region.
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