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Video shows the hijacking of the Jaffar Express in Pakistan by the Balochistan Liberation Army on Tuesday (March 11).
Video has been available online since at least April 2022.
A 59-second video of multiple explosions near a train has gone viral on social media, claiming to show the hijacking of the Jaffar Express in Pakistan by the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) on Tuesday (March 11). “The Baloch Liberation Army hijacked a train and took 120 passengers hostage. They are fighting against the tyranny of the Pakistani govt towards the Baloch people and for a free Balochistan. They aren’t terrorists but freedom fighters. Hope they get back their Balochistan soon,” read an X post, which has clocked 54.3K views so far, while another stated more than 100 Pakistani soldiers were killed.
Separatist militants launched an attack on the Jaffar Express, a passenger train carrying around 500 people in southwestern Pakistan’s Balochistan province on Tuesday. The security forces reportedly informed that 16 militants were killed and 104 passengers were rescued. The BLA claimed responsibility for derailing the train, asserting that they had seized control, killed 30 security personnel, and taken 214 passengers, including active-duty military personnel, as hostages. The BLA, designated by the US and Pakistan as a terrorist organisation, has been engaged in a decades-long insurgency against the Pakistan government, seeking independence for the natural resource-rich province.
Newschecker scanned through the comment section and found a comment pointing out that the video was old. The user also shared a longer version (1:46) of the video, where an infographic at the beginning states that the purported attack killing multiple soldiers aboard a train happened in Sibi, northeast of Balochistan, on January 18, 2022.
A relevant keyword search led us to the same video uploaded on X on April 15, 2022, stating that the BLA has released footage of an IED attack on a train carrying FC (Frontier Corps) personnel near Sibi, Balochistan. We also came across this write-up on the South Asian Terrorism Portal, which stated that at least seven FC personnel were killed and six others injured in a landmine explosion on March 15, 2022, in the Sangan area of Sibi District in Balochistan with BLA claiming responsibility for the attack.
The beginning portion of the video was also featured in a News9 Plus X post (See 00:05 mark), dated September 12, 2022, on a feature story on how Pakistan’s high-handed policies have triggered violent resistance in Balochistan.
Although Newschecker could not yet independently verify the details of the video, we can confirm that it predates the March 11, 2025 hijacking of the Jaffar Express by at least three years.
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A video that has been available online since at least April 2022 has been falsely linked to the 2025 train hijacking in Pakistan.
False
