A total of 27 terrorists were killed while 155 passengers were rescued by Pakistan security forces as the counterattack against Jaffar Express attackers entered the second day on March 12, 2025, said security sources. Terrorists detonated a railway track and fired on a passenger train in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, capturing dozens of hostages and fighting security forces leading a rescue operation, police said.
The incident occurred around 1:00 pm (0800 GMT) in rural Sibi district on Tuesday, not far from the city station where the train had been scheduled to stop. Earlier that morning, the train had left Quetta for Peshawar, in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa – an approximately 30-hour journey.
“The affected train is still on the spot and the armed men are holding passengers,”
senior district police officer Rana Dilawar stated.
“Security forces launched a massive operation,”
he said, adding that helicopters and special forces had been deployed.
Furthermore, terrorists have set up suicide bombers next to some innocent hostages employing them as human shields, Radio Pakistan reported. As a result of the train getting stuck in a tunnel, the driver died after sustaining serious wounds, local authorities, police and railway officials said. The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a terrorist organisation in Pakistan, declared it had destroyed the tracks and “swiftly took control of the train”.
The group stated it would execute 10 people as a response to the continued military operation. The BLA has insisted the release within 48 hours of Baloch political prisoners, activists and missing persons, it said had been kidnapped by the military.
“BLA is prepared for a prisoner exchange,”
the group said. “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.”
Security forces said some of the terrorists had taken about 35 hostages into the mountains while others were allegedly holding onto the locomotive. Security forces also expressed an apparent explosion near the tunnel and that they were engaging in fire with the militants in a mountainous area.
A security source said 104 passengers were rescued, 17 injured taken to the hospital, and 16 militants had been shot dead, saying the rest were surrounded. “The operation will continue until the last terrorist is eliminated,” they said.
The threat of executions was real Client “Civilian passengers, particularly women, children, the elderly, and Baloch citizens, have been released safely and given a secure route,” the BLA wrote in a statement sent to journalists and posted on Telegram. “The BLA further warns that if military intervention continues, all hostages will be executed.”
