By Saleem Ahmed and Asif Shahzad
QUETTA (Reuters) – Separatist militants wearing suicide vests were seated next to some of the dozens of passengers held hostage in a train hijack in southwest Pakistan, complicating rescue efforts, security sources said on Wednesday.
About 60 Balochi militants blew up a railway track and lobbed rockets on Tuesday at the Jaffar Express, carrying more than 400 passengers, a security official said. So far, 190 of them have been rescued, government officials said.
“People were attacked … passengers were injured and some passengers died,” said Muhammad Ashraf, who was on the train.
But there was no official word on how many remain in the captivity of the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic armed group that claimed responsibility for the attack, saying on Tuesday that it was holding 214 hostages.
The train driver was killed after suffering serious injuries, police and railway officials said.
Hundreds of troops and teams in helicopters have been thrown into the effort to rescue the hostages in the remote mountainous area where the train was stopped.
But BLA militants with bombs strapped to their bodies were sitting next to other passengers, a security source told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
“The militants have made some suicide bombers sit right next to some hostage passengers,” he added.
Images in a video provided by the militants show the train travelling through a barren pass when an explosion on the track sends up plumes of black smoke as the locomotive approaches, while a group of militants watches from a hill above.
The video, posted on messaging app Telegram by the group’s spokesperson, then cuts to images of people being pulled off the train halted outside a tunnel. Reuters could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.
The group has threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities meet its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing persons it says were abducted by the military.
“Comrades are shedding their blood for you, for this motherland,” one of its fighters on the train said in a Telegram message that urged people in mineral-rich Balochistan to join the group’s fight against Pakistan’s government.
The security source told Reuters there were 425 people on the train when it was attacked on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan’s capital of Quetta.
After seizing control of the train, the insurgents began pulling passengers off and checking their identification, the source added.
“They were looking for soldiers and security personnel,” the official said, estimating that at least 11 people, including paramilitary troops, had been killed.
‘BRING MY CHILD BACK’
The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
On Wednesday, the security source said the military operation had killed 30 of the group’s fighters. The previous day, the BLA denied any deaths among its members.
More than 50 of those rescued arrived in Quetta on Wednesday, escorted by security forces, to be greeted by distraught relatives.
A woman, who said her son was among the passengers still held hostage, confronted provincial minister Mir Zahoor Buledi when he visited the freed passengers.
“I beg you with folded hands, please bring my child back,” she said. “Why didn’t you stop the trains if they were not safe? If the train was never going to reach its destination, why let it depart?”
Buledi told reporters the government is working to beef up security in the region.
A Reuters journalist saw nearly 100 vacant coffins at Quetta railway station, where more of those aboard the Jaffer Express were expected to arrive.
Pakistan Railways has suspended services from the provinces of Punjab and Sindh to Balochistan until security agencies confirm the area is safe, media said on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; additional reporting by Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar and Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismial Khan; writing by Sakshi Dayal and Saad Sayeed; Editing by Kate Mayberry, Raju Gopalakrishnan and Gerry Doyle)
