Old Pakistan militant footage misrepresented as recent rail attack

Published on March 21, 2025 at 08:29
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

Hundreds of train passengers taken hostage by a militant group in Pakistan were freed in mid-March after a 30-hour siege, during which 27 off-duty soldiers were shot. But a video of an explosion in a moving train shared thousands of times on social media does not show the attack; it was filmed in 2022 and depicts another militant assault on the army.

"The Balochistan Liberation Army has hijacked the Jaffar Express in Pakistan. There were about 500 passengers on the train. ISI officers are also among these passengers. The video of the attack on the train has now surfaced," says a March 11, 2025 X post.

The post features a clip of a train passing through the hills when it is rocked by a sudden blast.

Screenshot of the false post taken March 13, 2025

The Pakistan army freed more than 340 train passengers the day after armed militants took some 450 hostage and wounded the driver in a March 11 attack in the volatile southwestern province of Balochistan (archived link here, here).

Attacks by a separatist group called the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), which accuses outsiders of plundering natural resources in the region bordering Afghanistan and Iran, have soared in recent years, mostly targeting security forces and ethnic groups from outside the province.

Similar posts have also surfaced on X and Facebook, but the video shared online was filmed in 2022 and depicts another militant attack in Balochistan.

A reverse image search on Google found the same video circulated online almost three years before the train hijack in Pakistan (archived link).

The caption of an April 15, 2022 X post sharing the clip suggests the BLA released footage of an IED attack on a train carrying Frontier Corps, a group of Pakistani paramilitary forces, near the city of Sibi in Balochistan.

A keyword search on the messaging platform Telegram surfaced a press release the BLA forwarded January 18, 2022 from Hakkal, the group's official media channel.

"The Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) freedom fighters targeted the Jaffar Express train with an IED at Mushkaf area of Bolan near Sibi on Tuesday, as a result four bogies of Jaffar Express derailed," it says.

Screenshot of the the 2022 BLA press release shared on Telegram

Local media reported in January 2022 that at least five people were injured in an explosion near a railway track in the area (archived link here, here).

A Google keyword search surfaced an archived version of the video circulating online from Hakkal.

The caption says: "Footage of Baloch Liberation Army attacks against the Pakistani Military in Balochistan". The BLA logo appears in the top-right corner of the clip.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the 2022 Hakkal video

Using Google Maps, AFP confirmed the video shows a blast in the Mushkaf area of Balochistan (archived link).

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about Pakistan here.

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