The Pakistani military said Wednesday that 21 hostages were killed aboard a train hijacked by separatist militants from the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA). The BLA claimed it killed 50 people when it took responsibility for the terrorist attack.
“Today we freed a large number of people, including women and children. The final operation was carried out with great care,” said Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, director of the ISPR, the public relations wing of the Pakistani Armed Forces.
The train, known as the Jaffar Express, was hijacked on Tuesday with 440 people aboard as it approached a tunnel in the southwestern province of Balochistan. Chaudhry said many of the passengers were women and children.
The train was bound for Peshawar from Quetta, a journey of about a thousand miles. Heavily armed militants, some of them wearing suicide vests, brought the train to a halt by blowing up the tracks, trapping the train inside the tunnel.
Passengers said the attackers also hit the engine with a rocket-propelled grenade (RPG). The driver of the train said he and his crew threw themselves on the floor of the engine during the attack and stayed here for 27 hours.
The attackers won a fierce gun battle with security agents on the train, then forced the passengers to disembark. Some of the passengers were told to leave, while others were kept as hostages. The attackers demanded numerous concessions, including the release of Baloch prisoners, within 48 hours or their prisoners would be killed.
Chaudhry said 21 of those hostages were killed when security forces stormed the train for a “final clearance” operation.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his government condemned the attack on the train. Chaudhry vowed the perpetrators would be “hunted down and brought to justice.”
“The incident of the Jaffar Express changes the rules of the game,” he vowed.
The game is not new. Baloch separatists have been waging an insurgent campaign for decades, stepping up their attacks when they felt heavy Chinese investments in the region’s gold and copper mines were not adequately benefiting its residents. The BLA also frames many of its attacks as responses to Pakistani military activity in Balochistan.
The Baloch are a nomadic people that can be found in Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. Many of them feel their respective national governments treat them unfairly and long for independence.
Balochistan is both the largest, and most sparsely populated, province of Pakistan. Quetta, the point of origin for the train hijacked on Tuesday, is the capital of Balochistan. Before the train hijacking, one of the BLA’s most notorious recent acts was bombing the train station in Quetta in November 2024.
The BLA on Thursday took responsibility for the train attack, but disputed many other aspects of the ISPR account, including the claim that Pakistani forces were now in control of the train.
“The ground reality is that the battle continues on multiple fronts, and the enemy is suffering heavy casualties and military losses. The occupying army has neither achieved victory on the battlefield nor managed to save its hostage personnel,” the BLA claimed.
The separatist militants also said Pakistani forces suffered far more casualties than the four they have admitted to, the Pakistanis refused to negotiate a prisoner exchange, and the Pakistanis have begun killing Baloch civilians in frustrated rage over the train situation.
“If the occupying army truly claims victory, then it should allow independent journalists and impartial sources access to the war-torn areas so that the world can witness the real losses suffered by the Pakistani army,” the BLA said.
Prime Minister Sharif, who paid a state visit to Balochistan on Thursday, said the “cowardly acts” of the separatists “will not shake Pakistan’s resolve for peace.”
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