SIBI (Pakistan): Pakistan security sources on Wednesday said the military had freed 190 train passengers taken hostage by gunmen on the second day of a siege in the mountainous southwest.
“So far, 190 passengers have been rescued, and 30 terrorists have been killed. Due to the presence of women and children with suicide bombers, extreme caution is being exercised,” security sources told AFP.
“The operation continues to eliminate the remaining militants.”
Attacks by separatist groups who accuse outsiders of plundering natural resources in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, have soared in the past few years.
The assault was immediately claimed by the Baloch Liberation Army, who released a video of an explosion on the track followed by dozens of militants emerging from mountainous hiding places and storming onto the carriages.
“Information suggests that some militants have fled, taking an unknown number of hostages into the local mountainous areas,” a security official in the area told AFP.
Muhammad Kashif, a senior railway government official in the provincial capital Quetta, told AFP on Tuesday afternoon that the 450 passengers on board had been taken hostage.
Passengers who walked for hours through rugged mountains to reach safety described being set free by the militants.
“Our women pleaded with them, and they spared us,” Babar Masih, a 38-year-old Christian labourer told AFP on Wednesday. “They told us to get out and not look back. As we ran, I noticed many others running alongside us.”
At a railway station in Quetta, paramilitary troops brought empty coffins that will be sent to the site of the incident.
“I can’t find the words to describe how we managed to escape. It was terrifying,” Muhammad Bilal, who had been travelling with his mother on the Jaffar Express train, told AFP.
