An explosion on a train in Pakistan on Sunday killed 29 people and injured another 102.
The blast targeted a commuter train in Quetta, in western Pakistan, which was headed to a military residential area, police sources reported.
“As a result of the explosion, 29 passengers died and 102 were injured. The nature of the explosion is currently being investigated,” Hameed Ali Shah, a police official in Quetta, told EFE. Women and children were among the dead and injured, sources cited by Xinhua added.
According to authorities, the explosion is believed to have occurred on the railway tracks near the Chaman Phatak level crossing, a railway junction located in the capital of Balochistan province, approximately 125 kilometers from the border with Afghanistan.
“A commuter train coming from Quetta was hit by an explosion near the Chaman Phatak railroad crossing,” said Muhammed Ramzan, a police officer at the Quetta Police Control Center, adding that the train had departed from a military base in Quetta.
The locomotive and three railcars derailed
The force of the explosion caused the locomotive and three cars to derail, two of which overturned, police added. The shockwave also destroyed more than 10 vehicles parked nearby and shattered the windows of adjacent buildings. Federal Railways Minister Muhammad Hanif Abbasi called the attack a “cowardly act of terrorism” and attributed it to “hostile forces” operating from Afghanistan with Indian backing, whose sole objective is to destabilize the country.
Balochistan Province, the largest but also the least developed in Pakistan, is the scene of an armed separatist insurgency that has been ongoing for decades against the Pakistani central government.
The main Baloch group in the region, the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), accuses Islamabad of exploiting its vast natural resources, rich in gas and minerals, without the local population—which suffers from the highest poverty rates in the country—reaping any benefits.
Adding to this tension is the growing activity of Islamist groups such as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), known as the Pakistani Taliban, which are ideologically aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan.
Islamabad has repeatedly accused the Kabul regime of allowing both TTP Islamist insurgents and Baloch separatist commandos to take refuge on Afghan territory to plan and carry out coordinated attacks on Pakistani soil.
The Jaffar Express train, carrying law enforcement personnel heading home for the Eid holidays, had departed from Quetta Cantonment when the explosion occurred, around 8:05 a.m. local time.
Preliminary investigations suggested that the attack was carried out by a suicide bomber using a car bomb loaded with over 70 kg of explosives.
Share on:
