New Delhi: In a brazen escalation of Balochistan’s simmering insurgency, the Jaffar Express passenger train was ripped apart by a remote-controlled IED blast in Pakistan’s restive southwest, derailing five coaches and hurling them off the tracks in the Dasht area of Mastung district.
The attack, claimed by the Baloch Republican Guard (BRG), comes mere hours after militants targeted a military patrol clearing the same railway line, underscoring glaring lapses in Pakistan’s security apparatus amid nationwide turmoil.
The Quetta-bound train, ferrying scores of passengers including army personnel from Peshawar, shuddered to a halt around 7:30 pm local time when the explosive device detonated beneath the tracks.
Harrowing videos circulating on social media capture rescuers scrambling among twisted metal to free trapped travellers, with at least four reported injured in the chaos. Rail services ground to a halt, stranding hundreds as emergency teams battled the wreckage under the shadow of rugged mountains.
BRG spokesperson Dustain Baloch swiftly took responsibility, boasting that the “controlled blast” killed and wounded several Pakistani soldiers aboard. “The army misuses civilian trains as shields; we urge the public to shun them,” he declared in a statement, vowing relentless strikes until Balochistan’s “independence.”
The timing reeks of coordinated fury: just hours earlier, an IED ambush on soldiers inspecting the route left several gravely hurt, amplifying accusations of intelligence failures in the province where separatists accuse Islamabad of resource plunder and enforced disappearances.
This isn’t the Jaffar Express’s first brush with terror. Back in March, Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) fighters hijacked the same train in the Bolan Pass, holding over 400 hostages – including 200 troops – for a tense 30-hour siege that claimed 61 lives before a bloody military rescue. As protests rage in neighbouring Khyber Pakhtunkhwa over airstrikes killing 30 civilians, Baloch militants’ audacity signals Pakistan’s heartland is fracturing further.
Authorities have launched a manhunt, but for Balochistan’s beleaguered residents, the rails of hope now run red with defiance.