‘A rain of rockets and bullets’: Survivors of Pakistan’s prepare hijacking – INA NEWS

Quetta, Pakistan – Survivors of Tuesday’s lethal prepare hijacking by Baloch separatists have described how they watched fellow passengers being executed and fled whereas being shot at.

Dozens of fighters belonging to the Balochistan Liberation Military (BLA) focused 9 carriages of the Jaffar Categorical with rocket-propelled grenades and gunshots because it handed by means of colonial-era tunnels within the rugged, mountainous Bolan Move.

The prepare, which departed from Quetta, the provincial capital of the southwestern province of Balochistan, at 9am (04:00 GMT) for Peshawar, the capital of the northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, got here beneath assault close to Sibi metropolis, about 160km (100 miles) from Quetta, at round 1pm (08:00 GMT).

The prepare’s route makes a journey of greater than 1,600km (994 miles) by means of Punjab to achieve its closing vacation spot, Peshawar. The journey takes roughly 30 hours, with stops at about 30 stations throughout the nation.

On Wednesday evening, Pakistan’s safety forces mentioned they’d concluded a navy operation in opposition to the fighters, rescuing 346 passengers, and killing all 33 of the attackers. However 26 passengers, the prepare driver and a paramilitary soldier had been additionally killed, they mentioned.

There have been almost 400 passengers on the prepare when it was attacked. The BLA, which mentioned it was holding the passengers hostage, had on Tuesday given the Pakistan authorities a 48-hour ultimatum, demanding the “unconditional launch of Baloch political prisoners, forcibly disappeared individuals and nationwide resistance activists”.

‘They simply took individuals apart and shot them’

Passengers who’ve been freed within the safety forces’ operation described their hours of captivity as “horrific”.

“I noticed so many killings in entrance of my eyes and I knew that I used to be the subsequent, however I escaped with different passengers and colleagues on Wednesday morning,” Ghulam Sarwar, 48, instructed Al Jazeera.

An assistant subinspector of the Pakistan Railways Police, he was onboard the prepare and later made a daring escape with a bunch of passengers and fellow armed guards.

Sarwar was travelling on the prepare from Quetta railway station together with 4 different armed railway personnel and 5 troopers who had been charged with guarding the passengers, a daily apply. When the assault started, he mentioned he and the opposite armed personnel returned fireplace.

“It was like a rain of rockets and bullets on the prepare, however we retaliated with gunfire,” he recalled. “Once we ran out of bullets, they got here down and began pulling the passengers from the prepare.”

The attackers started separating the passengers in line with ethnicity by checking their id playing cards, eradicating ethnic Punjabi passengers and people suspected of being a part of the Pakistani navy, and executing them. “They killed so many individuals,” Sarwar mentioned. He couldn’t depend how many individuals had been slain, he mentioned, however he witnessed the fighters “simply taking teams of individuals except for the railway observe and capturing them”.

“The killings continued till 10pm after numerous attackers left the realm after hugging some remaining fighters who stayed behind. In addition they killed anybody who tried to flee,” Sarwar mentioned.

Within the morning, Sarwar and one other group of passengers and safety personnel managed to flee from the positioning the place the hostages had been being held. “We ran out within the morning however one other railway policeman who was with me was hit by a bullet on his again after the attackers began capturing at us from the close to mountains,” he mentioned. The policeman was killed, he mentioned.

As he and his fellow passengers fled, they had been fired upon by the separatist fighters however managed to make it 6km (4 miles) alongside the tracks to the close by railway station at Panir, the place Pakistani safety forces had been ready to obtain them.

‘I noticed a rocket hit the engine’

Murad Ali, 68, who was travelling to the southern metropolis of Jacobabad together with his spouse, additionally witnessed the assault however was amongst these allowed to go free by the attackers. “I noticed a rocket hit the engine of the prepare after we heard intense firing. They got here inside our compartment and requested my id and ethnicity [Sindhi] after which allowed me to go,” he mentioned.

“I accompanied dozens of girls and youngsters and we adopted the railway observe for six kilometres on foot till we reached the Panir railway station after nightfall the place safety forces took us to Mach railway station,” he instructed Al Jazeera. The couple then returned to Quetta.

Bibi Farzana, Murad’s spouse, described the prepare as being “solely lined with smoke attributable to firing and explosions”. She added: “They pulled off all of the passengers however they separated ethnic Punjabis from the remainder of the passengers.”

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s safety officers mentioned its forces had killed 30 fighters within the operation to rescue the hostages and that safety clearance was nonetheless happening.

Balochistan province’s Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti mentioned the assault was an try by separatists to offer the impression that Quetta is a “violent surroundings”.

The federal government mentioned it had deployed further troopers to Quetta railway station, and dozens of coffins have been dispatched to the assault website aboard a aid prepare from Quetta station.

Baloch separatists, who demand independence from Pakistan, accuse the state of abducting and persecuting those that communicate out in opposition to it.

Whereas that is the primary time an entire prepare has been hijacked, there have been a collection of assaults on trains prior to now two years.

Most not too long ago, in November 2024, separatists killed almost 30 prepare passengers – most of them Pakistani troopers – in a suicide bombing at Quetta station because the Jaffar Categorical was about to depart the station.