By Saleem Ahmed and Asif Shahzad
QUETTA (Reuters) -Separatist militants said on Wednesday they have killed 50 passengers from a train hijacking in southwestern Pakistan as security forces worked to rescue the hostages.
Reuters was not able to verify the militants’ account. The Interior Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the militants’ statement.
Dozens of separatist Baloch militants on Tuesday blew up the railway track and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Express, carrying more than 400 passengers, a security official said.
Government officials say 190 of them have been rescued so far. The militants say all the passengers detained are security officials and all civilians have been freed.
“Today, the enemy forces attempted an armed advance using heavy artillery and sophisticated weaponry, leading to intense clashes,” the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said in a statement.
“In direct retaliation to Pakistan’s persistent aggression … the BLA has executed 50 additional captive enemy personnel within the past hour.”
Hundreds of troops and teams in helicopters have been drafted into the effort to rescue the hostages in the remote mountainous area where the train was stopped. The train driver and several others had already been killed, officials said, before the militants’ latest statement.
Hours before the BLA made its announcement on the 50 hostages, the security official said all the militants at the site had been killed and the operation had entered its “final phase”. Reuters was also not able to verify the official’s account.
Junior Interior Minister Talal Chaudhry told Geo television earlier on Wednesday that militants were wearing suicide vests as they sat among the passengers held hostage, complicating the rescue attempt. He said 70-80 attackers had hijacked the train.
The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.
The militants have in recent months stepped up their activities using new tactics to inflict high death and injury tolls and target Pakistan’s military.
Baloch militant groups say they have been fighting for a larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals denied by the central government.
The BLA had threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities met its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing people it says were abducted by the military.
Before its statement on killing 50, the group had said half that time had now elapsed. It also said that if the military did not stop its rescue operation, the group would begin retaliatory executions.
There was no official word on how many hostages remain in the captivity of the BLA, which claimed responsibility for the attack. It had said on Tuesday that it was holding 214 people, mostly security personnel.
FAMILIES URGE ACTION
The security source told Reuters there were 425 people on the train when it was attacked on its way to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province from Balochistan’s capital of Quetta.
After seizing control of the train, the insurgents began pulling passengers off and checking their identification, the source said.
“They were looking for soldiers and security personnel,” the official said, estimating that at least 11 people, including paramilitary troops, had been killed.
More than 50 of those rescued arrived in Quetta on Wednesday, to be reunited with distraught relatives.
A woman, who said her son was among the passengers, confronted provincial minister Mir Zahoor Buledi when he visited those freed.
“Please bring my child back,” she said. “Why didn’t you stop the trains if they were not safe?”
Buledi told reporters the government was working to beef up security in the region.
A Reuters journalist saw nearly 100 empty coffins at Quetta railway station, where more of those aboard the Jaffar Express were expected to arrive.
Pakistan Railways has suspended services from the provinces of Punjab and Sindh to Balochistan until security agencies confirm the area is safe, media said on Wednesday.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed in Quetta and Asif Shahzad in Islamabad; additional reporting by Mushtaq Ali in Peshawar, Saud Mehsud in Dera Ismial Khan and Shilpa Jamkhandikar in Mumbai; writing by Sakshi Dayal and Saad Sayeed; Editing by Kate Mayberry, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Gerry Doyle and Alison Williams)
