Baloch Militants Hijack Pakistan Passenger Train With 400 On Board – Latest Updates

Baloch Militants Hijack Pakistan Passenger Train With 400 On Board: On a Tuesday in southwestern Pakistan, militants opened fire upon a passenger train, injuring its driver and also creating panic among the numbers of passengers, according to news agency Reuters.

The Jaffar Express, ferrying some 400 people on board in nine bogies, was on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Quetta in Pakistan's southwestern Balochistan province when it was fired at, railway officials said. The authorities are yet to divulge any detail regarding the extent of damage or whether other injuries were suffered by passengers.

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The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a militant separatist organization, has proclaimed being behind the attack. The BLA published a statement in which they also claimed to have taken several hostages from the given train, staff of security forces among them.

As per the local media reports, the militant group claimed that six military men had been killed in the attack. The militant group also claimed that the attack had captured hundreds of passengers. In a rather scary warning, the BLA threatened to kill all hostages should Pakistan attempt any military rescue operation.

HT.com could not independently verify this information.

Security forces were dispatched to the site, and under investigation was an attack.

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The Balochistan government declared any emergency provisions it already had in place and mobilised all its institutions to handle the situation, Shahid Rind, government spokesman.

“There are reports of intense firing at a Jaffar Express [train] going from Quetta to Peshawar," Balochistan government spokesperson Shahid Rind told Dawn. Such a type of incident could probably be termed a terrorism incident.

Balochistan, the province rich in resources but troubled by continuous civil strife, has been engulfed in a rebellion for several decades as its separatist groups demand freedom or at least more autonomy over the mineral-rich province. BLA is fighting for the liberation of Balochistan, as attack upon security forces, key infrastructures, and civilians in the region have become somewhat of a norm in recent years.

The largest among several ethnically based insurgent organizations that have carried on attacks against the South Asian nation for decades in order to claim that its own government has been most unduly misappropriating the gas and mineral wealth of the resource-rich Balochistan is the Balochistan Liberation Army.

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