Separatist militants hijacked a prepare carrying greater than 400 individuals in an remoted mountainous space of southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday.
A militant group that claimed accountability for the assault mentioned it was holding scores of safety personnel who had been on the prepare, and it threatened to kill them if the Pakistani authorities didn’t conform to a prisoner alternate.
The destiny of the remainder of the passengers was not instantly clear, although the railway authorities mentioned that at the least 80 of them, principally girls and kids, had safely reached the closest station.
The militants, Baloch ethnic fighters, pressured the prepare to cease within the Bolan district of Balochistan Province after opening hearth on it, in accordance with railway and police officers.
The prepare was touring from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, to Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province. It was scheduled to go by a number of cities, together with Lahore and Rawalpindi, close to Islamabad. But it surely turned stranded inside a tunnel about 100 miles from Quetta because it got here underneath assault, with the motive force sustaining critical accidents, in accordance with the native authorities.
Shahid Rind, a spokesman for the Balochistan provincial authorities, mentioned the authorities had initially struggled to succeed in the location of the ambush due to the difficult terrain.
However safety officers mentioned that an operation was underway to rescue the passengers. A lot of helicopters had been seen heading towards Bolan from the navy air base in Quetta.
Pakistani safety forces mentioned they’d surrounded the realm across the prepare and had killed at the least 13 militants. They mentioned the fighters had dispersed into small teams due to the operation.
The militants took some passengers into the close by mountains, Muhammad Tallal Chaudry, the minister of state for inside, mentioned on the information channel Geo TV.
Rashid Hussain, a dealer in Quetta, mentioned his household had left on the prepare for Rawalpindi within the morning however had turn into unreachable after 2 p.m. “I’m deeply nervous,” he mentioned by phone. “The federal government isn’t offering any updates. Neither roads nor trains are protected on this province.”
The seizure of the passenger prepare highlighted the growing sophistication of a separatist insurgency in Pakistan’s southwest that seeks better political management and financial growth within the area.
The assault was the most recent in a sequence of violent episodes in Balochistan, a province bordering Iran and Afghanistan that’s the web site of main Chinese language-led tasks, together with a strategic port.
A bunch often called the Baloch Liberation Military, or B.L.A., claimed accountability for the prepare hijacking.
The group gave conflicting numbers about what number of hostages it was holding.
Initially, the B.L.A. claimed it had taken 182 hostages, together with members of varied safety companies touring on go away. It mentioned it had launched civilian passengers, together with girls, youngsters, the aged and native Baloch residents.
In a later assertion, nonetheless, the group mentioned it was holding at the least 214 individuals, together with navy and civilian legislation enforcement personnel. It mentioned it might give the federal government 48 hours to grant the “rapid and unconditional launch” of prisoners and threatened to kill its hostages if the demand was not met.
The B.L.A.’s declare that it held giant numbers of hostages couldn’t be independently verified, and the federal government has but to publicly affirm stories of hostages or casualties. Previously, separatist teams have given exaggerated figures in such instances.
Final yr, the B.L.A. carried out one in all Pakistan’s deadliest terrorist assaults, a suicide bombing that killed at the least 25 individuals, together with safety personnel, at Quetta’s busy railway station.
The group additionally claimed accountability for a lethal bombing focusing on a convoy carrying Chinese language residents close to the worldwide airport in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest metropolis. The separatists accuse the Chinese language of stealing the province’s assets.
In latest months, separatist teams have escalated high-profile assaults alongside Balochistan’s three main highways, straight difficult the state’s authority. Final week, an alliance of the teams, together with the B.L.A., introduced plans to accentuate assaults on Pakistani safety forces, infrastructure and Chinese language pursuits within the area.
“It factors to 2 key developments: the growing operational capabilities and class of separatist teams and the weakening management of the federal government in Balochistan,” mentioned Abdul Basit, senior affiliate fellow on the S. Rajaratnam Faculty of Worldwide Research in Singapore.
On the Quetta railway station, households of passengers aboard the prepare anxiously gathered on the data counter on Tuesday, searching for updates.
Many individuals within the area had begun to choose rail journey after frequent militant ambushes on the highways through which passengers had been killed after being taken off buses. Frequent protests have additionally brought about street blockages.
Practice companies had resumed solely in October after a two-month suspension due to militant assaults on railway tracks.
