Jaffar Express escapes fresh attack in Balochistan a day after services resume

The Jaffar Express, a passenger train repeatedly targeted by insurgents in Pakistan’s Balochistan province, narrowly escaped an explosion on Sunday, just a day after services resumed following a week-long suspension over security concerns.

The blast occurred in the Nasirabad area when suspected insurgents detonated explosives planted on a railway track used by the train on its Quetta–Peshawar route. While the explosion damaged a section of the track, officials confirmed that the train itself remained unharmed. Services were briefly halted as repairs were carried out.

Nasirabad senior superintendent of police Ghulam Sarwar said security forces were deployed to the site and a search operation was launched to trace the attackers. He noted that the train’s long journey through remote, mountainous terrain leaves it vulnerable to repeated sabotage attempts.

The Jaffar Express has come under frequent attack over the past year. Earlier this month, Pakistan Railways suspended the service from 9 to 12 November due to heightened security threats, later extending the suspension by two days. Operations resumed only on Saturday.

One of the deadliest incidents occurred on 11 March, when militants from the banned Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked the train carrying 380 passengers, triggering a two-day standoff that left 26 people dead. Security forces eventually rescued 354 passengers and killed 33 insurgents.

In October, a blast on a railway track in Sindh derailed five bogies and injured several people. According to Sarwar, insurgents have detonated explosives on the Jaffar Express route at least five times this year and even fired rockets at the train in one instance.

He added that additional security has been deployed on the service since the March attack, though the threat persists across several vulnerable stretches of the route.

With agency inputs