Terror in Bolan: Bombs rip through passenger train; 7 dead

Attack on Rawalpindi-bound Jaffar Express also injured 20

QUETTA: Two bombs ripped through a Rawalpindi-bound passenger train in Bolan district on Friday, killing seven people and injuring another 20. The deadly attack on Jaffar Express carries the signature of Baloch terrorist groups that have repeatedly targeted civilians in Balochistan, a province which has been in the throes of sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence since 2004.

The bombings came days after four Hazara women were killed in an apparent sectarian attack and marks an uptick in violence in the province where security situation has improved considerably for the past couple of years.

Jaffar Express, with 375 passengers on board, chugged out of Quetta railway station at 9am and was targeted in the Mach area of Bolan district, about 65 kilometres southeast of Quetta.


“The bombs were planted on the tracks and remotely triggered,” DSP Mach Qasim Sailachi told journalists. Another official added that the locomotive was partially damaged, while carriages No 3 and 5 would require extensive repairs.

He confirmed the casualties and said 10 of the injured were airlifted in an Army Aviation helicopter to the Combined Military Hospital in Quetta due to the precarious nature of their wounds. “The rest were ferried in ambulances to hospitals in the provincial capital,” he added.



A railways official confirmed two bombs were used in the attack. “When the train stopped and people were disembarking, there was another explosion,” Reuters quoted senior railways official Kashif Akhtar as saying. “The explosions damaged two carriages,” added another railways official Imtiaz Ahmad while speaking to AFP.

Bomb Disposal Squad officials confirmed IEDs weighing around five kilos were used in the attack. A contingent of Frontier Corps and police cordoned off the area before rescuers ferried the casualties.

Witnesses recalled the horror and chaos following the bombing. “I was standing in the door of compartment No. 3 when two explosions went off. Smoke filled the carriage and passengers started screaming,” Amanullah, a railways police constable, told The Express Tribune. “I saw three dead bodies and several injured passengers.”

Train service was temporarily suspended to and from Quetta because the tracks were ripped off at two places. The Lahore-bound Akber Bugti Express and Karachi-bound Bolan Mail were not allowed to chug out of Quetta railway station.

“We have repaired the track,” said railways assistant engineer Khadim Hussain Bhutto. “Jaffar Express left for Rawalpindi, while other trains will also leave for their destinations.”

A proscribed terrorist group, Baloch Liberation Army, claimed responsibility for the attack. Security forces foiled a similar attack on Thursday as an attacker laid explosives on a railway track near Quetta.

Oil and gas rich Balochistan, which borders Iran and Afghanistan, has been roiled for years by violent separatist, sectarian and religious violence. Balochistan is also the site of the ambitious $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor infrastructure project linking China’s western province of Xinjiang to the Arabian Sea via Pakistan.

Islamabad says that India, which is openly opposed to CPEC, is fuelling terrorism in Balochistan in its attempt to sabotage the multibillion-dollar project. An Indian spy, Kalbushan Yadav, was arrested while crossing into Balochistan from Iran in March, this year, and in a subsequent confessional statement he admitted that New Delhi was involved in creating unrest in Pakistan, especially in Balochistan and Karachi.

Prime Minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif “strongly condemned the attack and directed authorities concerned to find the culprits and bring them to task immediately,” his office said in a statement.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 8^th, 2016.