Several passengers were wounded when three catriages of Jaffar Express derailed in Mastung’s Dasht area in Balochistan on Tuesday following an explosion on the railway track, officials have confirmed.
Railway authorities have said that one carriage overturned while two others came off the track. The incident occurred when the train was en route from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s capital Peshawar to Quetta.
The explosion damaged the railway line, disrupting train services in the area. However, no casualties were reported, said a media report citing sources.
A leading English daily quoted Pakistan Railways’ Quetta division public relations officer Muhammad Kashif as saying that an inquiry into the incident has been launched. “The train was coming from Peshawar to Quetta and there were 270 passengers on board,” Kashif stated.
This is not the first time the train service has been attacked. In June, five bogies of the Express derailed after a blast took place on a railway track near Jacobabad. That train was also en route from Peshawar to Quetta.
On March 11, the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) militants blew up train tracks, attacking Jaffar Express, and taking more than 440 passengers hostage in a day-long standoff with security services in a remote mountain pass in the Bolan district.
After clearing the train and rescuing hostages, the military neutralised 33 terrorists. Before the operation commenced, the attackers had already martyred 26 passengers, while four security personnel were also martyred in the operation.
Pakistan has recently seen a spike in terrorist attacks carried out by Fitna al-Khawarij militants, who are reportedly hiding in Afghanistan and allegedly backed by India’s intelligence agency. This rise in cross-border incidents has occurred since Taliban rulers returned to Afghanistan in August 2021, particularly in the bordering provinces of KP and Balochistan.
Pakistan had repeatedly asked the Afghan Taliban government to cut ties with the proscribed Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and meet its commitment to eliminate the terror group from Afghan soil, cautioning that failure to act would be treated as “hostile” activity.