Pakistan train hostage standoff ends in bloodshed

What happened

Pakistan's military said Wednesday it had freed hundreds of passengers from a train hijacked by separatist militants in Balochistan province on Tuesday. Security forces killed 33 hijackers during the rescue operation, the army said, and four military personnel and 21 civilians were killed over the 30-hour standoff. About 440 people were on the Jaffar Express when militants with the Baloch Liberation Army blew up the tracks and boarded the train.

Who said what

Pakistan's government is "facing a widening security crisis" in "restive" Balochistan, a large and sparsely populated province bordering Iran and Afghanistan, The Washington Post said. The BLA is the "largest of several ethnic armed groups battling the government" for greater autonomy and a "larger share in the regional wealth of mines and minerals," Reuters said. The BLA recently "stepped up their activities using new tactics to inflict high death and injury tolls and target Pakistan's military."

The BLA said earlier Wednesday it had killed at least 50 passengers and would execute more unless the government agreed within 48 hours to negotiate the release of Baloch political prisoners. Shifting "targets from military to unarmed civilians" may give the BLA "instant public and media attention," security analyst Syed Muhammad Ali told The Associated Press, "but it will weaken their support base within the civilian population, which is their ultimate objective."

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What next?

Those who "kill innocent Pakistanis on the roads, in trains, in buses or in markets" will be "hunted down and brought to justice," army spokesperson Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said on television. Other security officials "have been quoted as saying some of the militants may have left the train, taking an unknown number of passengers with them into the surrounding mountainous area," the BBC said.