Pakistan train hijack enters day 2. Why aren't hostages free yet?

The Pakistan train hijack is now in its second day.

Authorities in Pakistan have launched a ‘full-scale’ operation to rescue the hostages aboard the Jaffar Express from the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA).

Around 425 passengers were thought to be onboard the train.

According to reports, authorities said they had freed 155 passengers over the past 24 hours

However, the BLA claimed it had released a number of passengers including women and children.

The train was heading from Peshawar to Quetta on Tuesday when it was halted by armed assailants around 1 pm.

Some militants are now thought to have fled into the mountains.

But why are rescue operations taking so long?

Let’s take a closer look:

Rebels wearing suicide bombs

News18 quoted sources as saying the rescue efforts were complicated by the fact that attackers are wearing suicide bombs and sitting next to the passengers.

BLA militants, with bombs strapped to their bodies, were sitting next to passengers, junior interior minister Talal Chaudhry told Geo TV.

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“They are wearing suicide vests and … that’s making the rescue difficult,” he said. “The operation is being conducted very carefully so that no harm is inflicted to the hostages, the women and children.”

Though hundreds of troops and teams in helicopters have mounted an operation, the train being halted in a tunnel has limited the security forces’ ability to carry out aerial ops.

As per BBC, special forces personnel have also been deployed.

The rugged mountainous terrain of the area and ongoing negotiations are also factors hampering the rescue ops.

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The group has threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities meet its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing people it says were abducted by the military.

The group said half that time had now elapsed.

The group shared a message from one of its fighters on the train calling on people in Balochistan to join their fight against the Pakistani state.

“Comrades are shedding their blood for you, for this motherland,” the man said in the message, posted on Telegram.

The BLA had previously warned of “severe consequences” if an attempt is made to rescue the remaining hostages.

There was no official word on how many people remained in the captivity of the militants.

A security source said on Wednesday that 27 BLA fighters had been killed so far in the military operation.

On Tuesday, the BLA denied any of its members were killed.

The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), an ethnic armed group that claimed responsibility for the attack, said on Tuesday it was holding 214 people hostage.

The outlet quoted reports as saying some militants may have left the Jaffar Express and headed into the mountainous area.

They may have taken some passengers with them.

“Information suggests that some militants have fled, taking an unknown number of hostages into the local mountainous areas,” a security official in the area was quoted as saying by the news agency AFP.

The Times of India quoted West Asia Strategist Waiel Awwad as saying, “Balochistan Liberation Army has claimed the hijacking of a Pakistani train with more than 100 soldiers. They have been releasing the children and the elderly woman and are negotiating with the Pakistani authorities. Balochistan feels that Pakistan has occupied and annexed Balochistan province into Pakistan after the Partition. They believe that they have been oppressed. All the oppression of the Baloch people led to their fighting against the Pakistan Army.”

“There is a call by the Baloch movement all over the world to join the demonstration on 28 March to fight against the Pakistan authority. There are some exchanges of fires. Pakistan army is using drones and military force.”

‘Felt like doomsday’

“It felt like doomsday. There was panic everywhere. The attackers did not harm women or elderly passengers. There were more than 100 armed assailants,” passenger Muhammad Ashraf was quoted as saying by ARY News.

“People were attacked … passengers were injured and some passengers died," Ashraf added.

“We reached the station with great difficulty, because we were tired and there were children and women with us,” Ashraf told BBC.

“We held our breath throughout the firing, not knowing what would happen next,” Ishaq Noor, another passenger, added.

Noor said he and his wife tried to shield their children from the bullets.

“If a bullet comes our way, it will hit us and not the children,” he said.

He said the initial explosion was so powerful that one of his children fell off the seat.

Mushtaq Muhammad told the outlet, “The attackers were talking to each other in Balochi, and their leader repeatedly told them to ‘keep an eye’ particularly on the security personnel to make sure that [the attackers] do not lose them.”

Images in a video provided by the militants show the train travelling through a barren pass when an explosion on the track sends up plumes of black smoke as the locomotive approaches, while a group of militants watches from a hill above.

The video, posted on messaging app Telegram by the group’s spokesperson, then cuts to images of people being pulled off the train halted outside a tunnel.

Firstpost could not independently verify the authenticity of the video.

A 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 added.

“They were looking for soldiers and security personnel,” the official said, estimating that at least 11 people, including paramilitary troops, had been killed.

The security source said the military operation had killed 30 of the group’s fighters. The previous day, the BLA denied any deaths among its members.

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 still held hostage, confronted provincial minister Mir Zahoor Buledi when he visited the freed passengers.

“Please bring my child back,” she said. “Why didn’t you stop the trains if they were not safe? If the train was never going to reach its destination, why let it depart?”

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.

The BLA is the largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government in Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran.

In what was previously a low-level insurgency, 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 decades for a larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals denied by the central government.

With inputs from agencies