The general director of Public Relations between Services (ISPR), Lieutenant General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, said Friday that India was the main sponsor of terrorism in Baluchistan, since he provided details of the Jaffar Express train attack.
The attack began on Tuesday afternoon, when the train, which was traveling from Quetta to Peshawar and transported 440 passengers, was ambushed by the terrorists of the Baluchistan Liberation Army (Bla). They opened fire on the train and kept passengers as hostages, which led the security forces to start an operation that lasted two days.
On Wednesday night, Lieutenant General Chaudhry confirmed the conclusion of the operation, stating that the 33 terrorists present at the site were neutralized. He also confirmed that 21 passengers and four members of the border body staff lost their lives in the kidnapping, but no hostages were damaged during the final rescue phase.
At the beginning of today’s press conference, Prime Minister Sarfaraz Bugti denounced the attack and said: “They went to unarmed people. This so -called fight is perpetrated by purely evil forces, and should only be referred as terrorists. “
Assuming the presser, Lieutenant General Chaudhry provided a brief detail of the incident again and said that the terrorists had deliberately selected a remote location to carry out the attack.
“The reason I mention the location is that the land was extremely difficult, making physical access very challenging. There were no mobile signs there. ”
Before the train was ambushed, he said, a large group of terrorists attacked a picket of the border body, martyred three FC soldiers.
“They operated in multiple groups, taking strategic positions in a higher terrain. After planting the improvised explosive device (FDI), which disabled the train, they took passengers as hostages, ”he said.
He said that some passengers were retained inside the train, while others separated into three groups outside.
“A group of hostages were launched depending on their ethnic affiliations,” he said, adding that there were logistical reasons for moving since there were too many people on the train so that the terrorists control.
He said that the terrorists tried to create a “false impression” of humanitarian values by stating that they had released some hostages.
Lieutenant General Chaudhry said terrorists had used Indian and Afghan weapons in the recent incident, as well as in previous attacks.
DG ISPR then criticized the Indian media for spreading propaganda on the incident.
“The Indian media showed false images of the incident to spread the propaganda,” he said, while showing some video clips on a screen to test their point.
“They tried to create a narrative sharing images generated by AI and false videos. They led an informative war. “
The ISPR DG said a “link” was working in the midst of the situation to give legitimacy to terrorists and their narrative.
A day ago, a high -level security conference was held in Quetta, reaffirming the resolution of the state to counteract any attempt to destabilize Pakistan with full strength. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, head of the Army personnel, General Syed also Munir, federal and provincial ministers, senior civil and military officials, and political party representatives attended the meeting, according to the State Pakistan radio.
After the debatable, Prime Minister Shehbaz, at a press conference, urged the National Unity and asked Pakistan’s political leadership to sit along with the military to discuss the challenges facing the country.
On Thursday a session of the National Assembly was also held, during which the Minister of Defense, Khawaja Asif, attacked the PTI for “politicizing” the kidnapping incident and “misunderstanding” the situation on social networks. The attack caused a generalized conviction of different countries, including China, the United States, Iran and Germany.
Bla attacks
Baluchistan has witnessed an increase in terrorist attacks during the past year. In November 2024, at least 26 people died and 62 were injured after a suicidal explosion crossed a Quetta railway station.
In 2024, the forbidden Bla arose as a key perpetrator of terrorist violence in Pakistan, according to a report by the group of experts based in Islamabad Institute for Peace Studies (Pips).
In August last year, dozens of militants affiliated with Bla launched numerous attacks throughout the province, in which at least 50 people, including 14 security men, lost their lives. In response, security forces had neutralized 21 militants.
At the beginning of that month, the then attached commissioner of Panjgur, Zakir Baloch, was shot dead on the Queta-Karachi National Highway, with CM Bugti stating that the bla was the group behind it.
In October 2024, a suicide bombing near the Karachi airport killed two Chinese nationals and a Pakistani citizen, for which two Suspects of Bla were sent to jail with judicial reference, while a investigation body was also formed.
The group also attributed the responsibility for the suicide bombardment of Quetta Railway in November last year, in which at least 26 people, including 16 security personnel, lost their lives and another 61 were injured.
Pakistan designated Bla as a terrorist organization in April 2006 after the group repeatedly attacked security personnel.
In January of this year, a former Bla member said during a press conference that the forbidden group “average citizens washed the brain to think about a certain way about Baluchistan and resorted to terrorist activities.”
Last month, the Bla attributed the responsibility of an attack at the Barkhan of Baluchistan, where seven passengers bound for Punjab were downloaded from a bus and dead dead.
In the previous large -scale kidnappings in the country, one that particularly comes to mind was in 1994, when three armed militants from Afghanistan took control of a school bus near Peshawar and took around 70 children as hostages. The bus was taken to the Afghanistan embassy in Islamabad, where elite command units fired them the next day.
