Death toll in Pakistan’s train hijacking rises to 31, army says

MACH, Pakistan – Pakistan’s military spokesman said on March 14 that the death toll in a train hijacking in the country had risen to 31, and he repeated accusations that neighbouring India and Afghanistan backed the militants who carried it out.

Security forces said they freed more than 340 train passengers in a two-day rescue operation that ended late on March 12, after a separatist group

bombed a remote railway track

in mountainous south-west Balochistan province and stormed a train with around 450 passengers on board.

The March 11 assault was claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), one of a number of separatist groups that accuse outsiders of plundering natural resources in Balochistan, near the borders with Afghanistan and Iran.

An army spokesman, Major-General Ahmad Sharif Chaudhry, told a press conference in Islamabad: “We have evidence that all the links to terrorism in Pakistan are traced back to Afghanistan.”

India was the main sponsor of the insurgents, he added.

Islamabad has long accused New Delhi and Kabul of providing money, resources, weapons and training grounds to the insurgents in Balochistan province.

Both countries have denied the accusations, saying that the insurgency is Islamabad’s internal problem.

Maj-Gen Chaudhry said a final count of the casualties included 18 soldiers, three railway employees and five civilians among the passengers who were held hostage by the insurgents for over 24 hours.

Another five soldiers lost their lives during the rescue operation that killed 33 of the insurgents, he said. A total of 354 hostages were rescued, he said.

A railway official in Balochistan said the bodies of 25 people were transported by train away from the hostage site to the nearby town of Mach on the morning of March 13.

The insurgents have said they still held hostages, but Maj-Gen Chaudhry said there was no evidence to suggest this was the case and the military has said the siege has ended.

Passengers who escaped from the siege and walked for hours through rugged mountains to reach safety said that they saw people being shot dead by militants.

The first funerals were expected to take place on the evening of March 13, after the Muslim-majority nation broke its daily fast for the holy month of Ramadan.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Muhammad Shehbaz Sharif arrived in the provincial capital of Quetta to meet with security officials, his office said.

“The Prime Minister expressed grief and sorrow over the martyrdom of security personnel and train passengers during the operation,” it said in a statement.

‘Our women pleaded’

The BLA released a video of an explosion on the track followed by dozens of militants emerging from hiding places in the mountains to attack the train.

Attacks by separatist groups have soared in the past few years, mostly targeting security forces and ethnic groups from outside the province.

Mr Muhammad Naveed, who managed to escape, told AFP: “They asked us to come out of the train one by one. They separated women and asked them to leave. They also spared (the) elders.

“They asked us to come outside, saying we will not be harmed. When around 185 people came outside, they chose people and shot them down.”

Mr Babar Masih, a 38-year-old Christian labourer, told AFP on March 12 that he and his family walked for hours through rugged mountains to reach a train that could take them to a makeshift hospital on a railway platform.

“Our women pleaded with them and they spared us,” he said. “They told us to get out and not look back. As we ran, I noticed many others running alongside us.”

Security forces have been battling a decades-long insurgency in impoverished Balochistan, but in 2024, there was a surge in violence in the province compared with 2023, according to the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies. AFP, REUTERS