Pakistan says all train hijackers killed, ending hostage stand-off

Pakistani security forces stormed a train on Wednesday that had been hijacked by separatist militants, killing all 33 attackers and ending a day-long stand-off involving hundreds of hostages, the military said.

Separatist Baloch militants on Tuesday blew up the railway track and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Express when it was on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan’s capital of Quetta, a security source said.

The military’s spokesman Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said 21 hostages and all 33 insurgents had been killed. He said 440 people had been on board.

“Today we freed a large number of people, including women and children … The final operation was carried out with great care,” Chaudhry said, adding that no civilians were killed in the operation.

He said the security forces had cleared the train “bogey to bogey”.

The Baloch Liberation Army, which claimed the attack, is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

  

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