QUETTA, Pakistan (Reuters) -Separatist militants fired at a passenger train carrying hundreds of passengers in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, injuring a train driver, police and railway officials said.
The Jaffar Express, with around 400 passengers on board in nine bogies, was on its way from Quetta in Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province to Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa when it was fired on, railway officials said.
In a statement, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a militant separatist group, claimed responsibility for the attack and said they had taken hostages from the train, including security forces.
Officials from the provincial government or railways did not confirm on hostages being taken.
Security forces had reached the site of the incident, in the Mushqaf area of the Bolan district of Balochistan, a railway official said.
The Balochistan government has imposed emergency measures and all institutions have been mobilised to deal with the situation, government spokesperson Shahid Rind said.
A decades-long insurgency in Balochistan by separatist militant groups has led to frequent attacks against the government, army and Chinese interests in the region, pressing demands for a share in mineral-rich resources.
The BLA seeks independence for Balochistan. It is the biggest of several ethnic insurgent groups that have battled the South Asian nation’s government for decades, saying it unfairly exploits Balochistan’s rich gas and mineral resources.
(Reporting by Saleem Ahmed, writing by Shilpa Jamkhandikar; editing by Sudipto Ganguly)
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