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Pakistani security forces are attempting to rescue dozens of hostages after separatist militants ambushed a train in a remote, mountainous area of the country’s south-eastern Balochistan province, in the latest of a wave of terror attacks.
Security forces launched a rescue operation late on Tuesday night, which the interior ministry said had saved more than 100 hostages, including 15 children, and killed at least 16 militants.
The Balochistan Liberation Army, a separatist group that took responsibility for the attack on Tuesday, said 214 hostages were still in its custody.
The group earlier threatened to kill security personnel if Islamabad did not agree, within 48 hours, to a prisoner exchange of activists they claimed were abducted by the military.
“If our demands are not met within the stipulated period or if the occupying state attempts any military action during this time, all prisoners of war will be neutralised and the train will be completely destroyed,” it wrote on Telegram.
The Jaffar Express was carrying about 450 passengers from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province when BLA fighters blew up the railroad tracks and “swiftly took control of the train”, the group said.
Officials in Pakistan’s security services said they had “tightened the cordon around the terrorists” and a “clearance operation” was ongoing, but warned that militants with suicide vests were stationed near the hostages.
Balochistan chief minister Sarfraz Bugti condemned the attack as “a cowardly act of terrorism”.
“The attackers will be brought to a painful end,” he wrote on social media platform X. “Security agencies are pursuing terrorists — no one will escape.”
The BLA, which seeks independence for the region bordering Afghanistan and Iran, is one of the groups behind a surge of terrorist violence over the past year, as the nation of 240mn has grappled with a deteriorating security situation.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, has launched a spate of attacks from neighbouring Afghanistan, where Islamabad alleges the group enjoys haven.
More than 2,500 civilians, security personnel and militants were killed by terror attacks in Pakistan in 2024, a 66 per cent increase from 2023, according to the Islamabad-based Centre for Research and Security Studies.
“Attacks on innocent citizens and passengers are inhumane and heinous acts,” said Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zardari. “The Baloch nation rejects those who attack and take hostages, innocent passengers, elders and children.”
The BLA said civilian passengers were released to safety but claimed it was holding “prisoners of war” from the military, police and intelligence services.
The Baloch insurgents have for decades been battling Pakistan’s government, which they accuse of exploiting the natural resources of the mineral- and gas-rich province, the country’s largest by area but one of the least developed.
In August, the group targeted bus passengers from the heartland Punjab province, killing at least 40, according to security officials.
Heavy-handed counterinsurgency tactics, including enforced disappearances, have further deepened hostility towards Islamabad in the province, said analysts.
The BLA has also attacked China-backed infrastructure projects and Chinese workers in the region, including the Gwadar Port, the flagship of the $62bn China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.
The province recorded an 84 per cent rise in attacks in 2024 versus the previous year, with violence from insurgent groups such as the BLA and Balochistan Liberation Front increasing 120 per cent, according to a January report by the Pak Institute for Peace Studies think-tank.
The institute added that attacks by Baloch groups “focused largely on security forces”.
This month, a female suicide bomber in the city of Kalat killed a law enforcement officer. In November, a suicide bombing at Quetta’s railway station hit a train just before departure, killing at least 32, including security personnel.
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