DG ISPR to hold presser on Jaffar Express hijacking

Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Director General Lieutenant Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry will hold a press conference at 3:30pm today to disclose details of the Jaffar Express hijacking and the subsequent clearance operation.

Balochistan Chief Minister Sarfaraz Bugti will also be present.

The hijacking incident occurred on Tuesday afternoon, when the train, travelling from Quetta to Peshawar and carrying 440 passengers, was ambushed by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) terrorists. They opened fire on the train and held the passengers hostage, prompting the security forces to initiate an operation that lasted two days.

On Wednesday evening, Lt Gen Chaudhry confirmed the conclusion of the operation, stating that all 33 terrorists present at the site were neutralised. He also confirmed that 21 passengers and four Frontier Corps personnel lost their lives in the hijacking, but no hostages were harmed during the final rescue phase.

A day ago, a high-level security conference was held in Quetta, reaffirming the state’s resolve to counter any attempt to destabilise Pakistan with full force. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Chief of Army Staff General Syed Asim Munir, federal and provincial ministers, senior civil and military officials, and representatives of political parties attended the meeting, according to state-run Radio Pakistan.

Following the moot, PM Shehbaz, in a press conference, urged national unity and called on Pakistan’s political leadership to sit together with the military to discuss the challenges facing the country.

A National Assembly session was also held on Thursday, during which Defence Minister Khawaja Asif assailed the PTI for “politicising” the hijacking incident and “misinterpreting” the situation on social media.
The attack drew widespread condemnation from different countries, including China, the United States, Iran, and Germany.

BLA attacks

Balochistan has witnessed an uptick in terrorist attacks over the past year. In November 2024, at least 26 people were killed and 62 injured after a suicide blast ripped through a Quetta Railway Station.

In 2024, the banned BLA emerged as a key perpetrator of terrorist violence in Pakistan, according to a report by Islamabad-based think tank Pak Institute for Peace Studies (PIPS).

In August last year, dozens of militants affiliated with BLA launched numerous attacks across the province, in which at least 50 people, including 14 security men, lost their lives. In response, security forces had neutralised 21 militants.

Earlier that month, then-Panjgur deputy commissioner Zakir Baloch was shot dead on the Quetta-Karachi National Highway, with CM Bugti stating that the BLA was the group behind it.

In October 2024, a suicide bombing near Karachi airport killed two Chinese nationals and a Pakistani citizen, for which two BLA suspects were sent to jail on judicial remand while a probe body was formed as well.

The group also claimed responsibility for the Quetta railway suicide bombing in November last year, in which at least 26 people, including 16 security personnel, lost their lives, and 61 others were injured.

Pakistan designated the BLA as a terrorist organisation in April 2006 after the group repeatedly attacked security personnel.

In January this year, a former BLA member said during a press conference that the banned group “brainwashed average citizens into thinking a certain way about Balochistan and resorting to terrorist activities.”

Last month, the BLA claimed responsibility for an attack in Balochistan’s Barkhan, where seven Punjab-bound passengers were offloaded from a bus and shot dead.

In earlier grand-scale hijackings 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 hostage. The bus was driven to the Embassy of Afghanistan in Islamabad, where units of elite commandoes gunned them down the next day.