All the hostages retained after the attack on a train by Balouthes separatists in Pakistan were released, after more than thirty hours of clashes in which 28 soldiers and a paramilitary were killed, a senior military official said on Wednesday, March 12 at the France-Presse agency.
In total, “168 hostages were released on Tuesday, and 178, Wednesday”while “27 soldiers taken in hostages” were killed, as well as a paramilitary who participated in rescue operations, detailed this high ranking under the cover of anonymity. Of “32 to 35 terrorists” were killed, he said.
On Tuesday, members of the Balutchistan Liberation Army – an isolated region on the border of Afghanistan and Iran – had taken hostage the Jaffar Express connecting the provincial capital, Quetta, to the city of Peshawar, in the north of the country, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. The train carried 450 passengers when it was arrested around 1 p.m. local time (9 am in Paris) by armed men in the Mashkaf rail tunnel, which crosses the Bolan pass about 157 kilometers from Quetta and 21 kilometers from Sibi. They would have destroyed the railway to the explosive to force the train to stop. The driver was killed. The attackers then forced the passengers to descend, keeping in their hands those who were from provinces other than Balutchistan or linked to the security forces.
Intense shooting between members of the Balutchistan Liberation Army, security personnel on board and the security forces dispatched on the spot continued throughout Tuesday to Wednesday. Pakistani troops have deployed in Balutchistan, in southwest Pakistan, on the borders of Afghanistan and Iran. Thirty attackers were slaughtered, sources said in the organs responsible for maintaining order. The authorities have so far not mentioned victims among the hostages or in the security forces, but about 150 coffins arrived in Quetta, the provincial capital on Wednesday.
A resurgence of attacks
Passengers told AFP to have been released and then walked for hours to reach the next station, from where a train took care of them. Then they went up to cars to go to Quetta. Tuesday evening, a released hostage told AFP that the attackers had “Verified identity papers” passengers and “Setting away those who were from the pendjab”perceived as dominating the ranks of the army, engaged in the battle against the separatists. “They killed two soldiers in front of me, before embarking four other verses I don’t know where”he continued, refusing to give his name. “Many paramilitaries and their families were on board the Jaffar Express to go on permission”told AFP an officer at Quetta.
In February, the Balutchistan Liberation Army (ABB) had already claimed the death of seven pendjabis. In August 2024, his fighters killed 39 people, after checking the ID cards on different roads before shooting them down if they were hanging. At the beginning of November, this separatist group laid a bomb on a quay of Quetta station and killed 26 people, including 14 soldiers.
In its press releases, ABL accuses “Pakistani generals and their pendjabia elite” of “Pillage resources” From Balutchistan, while local civil society, which regularly organizes sit-in calls for non-violence, accuses the authorities of making roundups of the Baloutche cause.
Pakistan is experiencing an upsurge in attacks, in particular Islamists and separatists, mainly in Balutchistan and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, which also borders Afghanistan. The ISLAMABAD Safety Research and Studies Center estimates that 2024 was the deadliest in almost a decade with more than 1,600 people who died in attacks, including 685 members of the security forces.