How Baloch militants hijacked Pakistan Jafar Express train carrying 450 passengers: Blew up railway track, killed driver

Pakistan security forces are planning to launch a “full-scale operation” on Wednesday to free train passengers taken hostage by Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) militants, including suicide bombers.

The Pakistani forces have rescued 155 of the 450 passengers from the Jafar Express train that was hijacked in the southwest of the country, while the government said an operation was underway to rescue dozens still held hostage, news agency Reuters reported.

The militants blew up a railway track and opened fire on the train on Tuesday as it travelled from Quetta, Balochistan’s capital city, to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

After coming under fire, the train was trapped inside a tunnel. The BLA militants took control of the train after exchanging fire with security personnel. The driver was wounded in the firing.

The Baloch militants then blew up the railway track on Tunnel Number 8, causing the train to derail. “The train was stopped by armed men in Tunnel No 8,” the Controller Railways Muhammad Kashif said in a statement.

The terrain, featuring 17 tunnels, allowed the militants to target the slow-moving train. Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind reported heavy gunfire on the Jaffar Express, travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, between Pehro Kunri and Gadalar, The Times of India reported.

The BLA, an ethnic armed group, claimed responsibility for the attack and threatened to start executing hostages unless Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing persons it said had been abducted by the military were not released within 48 hours.

The New York Times, citing railway and police officials, reported that the militants forced the train to stop in the Bolan district after opening fire on it.

The train was scheduled to pass through several cities, including Lahore and Rawalpindi, near Islamabad. But it became stranded inside a tunnel about 100 miles from Quetta as it came under attack, and the driver was killed, the report added.

Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan provincial government, said the authorities had initially struggled to reach the spot because of the challenging terrain, the NYT report said.

The militants have made bombers wearing “suicide jackets” sit next to some of the hostages, news agency Reuters reported, citing multiple sources who asked not to be named. They did not specify the number of people being held

BLA said on Tuesday it was holding 214 people hostage, and a security source told Reuters that there were 425 passengers on the train when it was attacked.

The number of militants involved in the attack was not clear. The security sources said on Wednesday that 27 had been killed so far.

BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling Pakistan’s government in the mineral-rich province of Balochistan, bordering Afghanistan and Iran.

Muhammad Kashif, a senior railway government official in Quetta, told news agency AFP “over 450 passengers onboard” had been taken hostage.

Hostages freed on Tuesday said they had to walk for hours through mountainous terrain to reach safety.

“I can’t find the words to describe how we managed to escape. It was terrifying,” Muhammad Bilal, who had been travelling with his mother on the Jafar Express train, told AFP.

Punjabis ‘taken away’

The driver of the train, a police officer and soldiers were killed in the assault, according to paramedic Nazim Farooq and railway official Muhammad Aslam, both at Mach railway station.

One passenger described gunmen sorting through identity cards to confirm who was from outside of the province, similar to a spate of recent attacks carried out by the Baloch Liberation Army.

“They came and checked IDs and service cards and shot two soldiers in front of me and took the other four to, I don’t know where,” said one passenger who asked not to be named, after walking four hours to the nearest train station.

“Those who were Punjabis were taken away by the terrorists,” he added.

Around 80 of the released passengers were taken to provincial capital Quetta under “tight security”, said a police official who was not authorised to speak to the media.