Quetta, Pakistan – Survivors of the deadly train hijacking by the Baroque separatists on Tuesday explain that they are watching fellow passengers being executed and fled while being shot.
Dozens of fighters from the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) targeted nine carriages from the Jafar Express, with hand-rena bullets and gunshots planted on rockets as they passed through the sturdy, mountainous Boranpas colonial tunnels.
The train departing from Quetta, the capital of the province in southwestern Balochistan, was attacked near Sibi city at 9am (04:00 GMT) for Peshawar, the capital of the province of Khaibhapak Tankwa in the northwest.
The train route travels over 1,600 km (994 miles) through Punjab to reach its final destination, Peshawar. The trip takes about 30 hours and stops at around 30 stations across the country.
On Wednesday night, Pakistani security forces said they had ended the military operation against the fighter planes, saving 346 passengers and killing all 33 attackers. However, 21 passengers and four paramilitary soldiers were also killed, they said.
The train had around 400 passengers when it was attacked. The BLA, which claims to have passengers held hostage, gave the Pakistani government a 48-hour ultimatum on Tuesday, demanding “unconditional release of Baroque political prisoners, forced vanishing people and national resistance activists.”
“They just took people aside and shot them.”
Passengers, released in security forces’ operations, described prisoner-of-war time as “terrifying.”
“I saw so many murders right in front of me, and although I knew it was the next, I ran away with other passengers and colleagues on Wednesday morning,” 48-year-old Ghulam Sarwar told Al Jazeera.
A sub-inspector of the Pakistani Railway Police, he was on the train and later made a bold escape with a group of passengers and fellow armed guards.
Sarwar was regularly hospitalized by five soldiers who were charged with protecting passengers by four other armed railway staff and five soldiers on the train from Quetta Railway Station. When the attack began, he said he and other armed personnel had returned the fire.
“It was like a rain of rockets and bullets on a train, but we retaliated with a shooting,” he recalled. “When we ran out of bullets, they came down and started pulling passengers off the train.”
The attackers began to separate passengers according to the ethnic group by checking their identification, ethnic Punjab passengers and suspected of being part of the Pakistani army, and by executing them. “They killed so many people,” Salwar said. He couldn’t count how many people were killed, he said, but he witnessed that fighters “just take groups of people with the exception of railway tracks.”
“The killing continued until 10pm after many attackers hugged the rest of the fighters, after which many of them left the area. They also killed those who tried to escape,” Salwar said.
In the morning, Salwar and another group of passengers and security guards were able to escape from where the hostages were being held. “We ran away in the morning, but another railroad officer with me was hit by a bullet in the back after the attacker started shooting us from a nearby mountain,” he said. The officer was killed, he said.
When he and his fellow passengers fled, they were fired by separatist fighters, but could be 6 km (4 miles) along the tracks to a railway station near Paneer, where Pakistani security forces were waiting to receive them.
“I saw the rocket hit the engine.”
Murad Ali, 68, who was traveling with his wife to the city of South Jakobabad, also witnessed the attack, but was one of those allowed by the attackers to be free. “After hearing the firing of firing, we saw a rocket hit the train engine. They went inside our compartment and asked me what my identity and ethnicity (Cindy) and then allowed me to go,” he said.
“I accompanied dozens of women and children and followed the six-kilometer railway tracks on foot until I arrived at Pana Railway Station after dusk when security forces took us to Mach Railway Station,” he told Al Jazeera. The couple then returned to Quetta.
Murad’s wife, Bibi Farzana, explained that the train was “completely covered in smoke due to the launch and explosion.” She added: “They pulled all the passengers apart, but the Punjabis separated from the other passengers.”
On Wednesday, Pakistani security officials said their forces killed 30 fighters in a campaign to save hostages, and their security clearance is still ongoing.
Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfraz Bhuguti said the attack was a separatist attempt to give the impression that Ketta was a “violent environment.”
The government said additional soldiers had been deployed at Quetta Railway Station, and dozens of co’s have been sent to the attack scene on a relief train from Quetta Station.
Baroque separatists, who demand independence from Pakistan, accused them of accusing them of acquiring and persecuting those who oppose it.
This is the first time an entire train has been hijacked, but there have been a series of attacks on the train over the past two years.
Most recently, in November 2024, separatists killed nearly 30 train passengers, most of whom are Pakistani soldiers, in a suicide bomb attack at Quetta station, where the Jafar Express was about to leave the station.
