QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was in the restive southwestern Balochistan province on Thursday to meet survivors of a train attack and the commandos who rescued over 300 passengers from insurgents who killed 21 civilian and four troops.
The Baloch Liberation Army, an outlawed group behind multiple deadly attacks in recent months, claimed responsibility for the attack that began Tuesday and ended Wednesday when troops killed all 33 insurgents in an operation that the military said resulted in no further passenger deaths.
The train was heading from the Balochistan capital, Quetta, to the northern city of Peshawar when insurgents blew up the track, forcing nine coaches and the engine of the Jafer Express train to stop partially inside a tunnel.
The BLA regularly targets Pakistani security forces and has attacked trains, but had never been able to hijack any train in the past. They have also attacked outsiders such as Chinese workers, thousands of whom are involved in multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects in Balochistan.
Oil- and mineral-rich Balochistan is Pakistan’s largest and least populated province. Members of the ethnic Baloch minority say they face discrimination and exploitation by the central government.
Amid tight security, Sharif and members of his Cabinet were received by senior government officials on his arrival at an airport in Quetta, his office said. It provided no further details. Authorities said arrangements were made to transport the bodies of victims to their hometowns and people who were wounded were receiving medical treatment.
Shafqat Ali Khan, the spokesman at Pakistan’s ministry of foreign affairs, told reporters in Islamabad that BLA assailants who hijacked the train were in contact with their handlers in Afghanistan.
“Our security forces successfully eliminated all 33 terrorists, including suicide bombers, while rescuing the hostages,” he said.
Khan said the attackers had been “in direct communications with Afghanistan-based planners throughout the incident” and Pakistan has repeatedly asked Kabul “to deny the use of its soil for terrorist groups like BLA for their attacks against Pakistan.”
“We urge Afghanistan to hold perpetrators, organizers, financiers, of this reprehensible act of terrorism accountable and cooperate with the government of Pakistan to bring all those who are concerned with this attack, including the real sponsors of terrorism to justice,” Khan said.
In an overnight statement, the military said it had “confirmed intelligence” indicating that the assault was “orchestrated and directed by terrorist ring leaders operating from Afghanistan, who were in direct communication with the terrorists throughout the incident.”
In Kabul, Abdul Qahar Balkhi, a spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, rejected the Pakistani charges, saying: “We are saddened by the loss of life of innocents in the incident.”
However, the military in the statement urged the Afghan Taliban government to uphold its responsibilities and deny the use of its soil for terrorist activities against Pakistan.
According to a military statement, the “terrorists, after blowing up the railway track, took control of the train and held the passengers hostage including women, children and elderly, using them as human shields.”
Many survivors said the assailants opened fire on the windows of the train, entered the cars and killed or wounded people before taking them hostage.
Three soldiers who had been guarding the railroad track were among those killed, according to military spokesman Lt. Gen. Ahmad Sharif.
Seperately, Pakistani security killed 10 militants after spotting them near a military facility in South Waziristan, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, officials said.
Authorities said those killed were members of Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTT. The group is an ally of the Taliban in Afghanistan and has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban seized power there in 2021.
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Associated Press writers Munir Ahmed in Islamabad and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this story.