Old Pakistan militant footage misrepresented as recent rail attack
"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.
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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 (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 .
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 found the same video circulated online almost years before the train hijack in Pakistan (archived link).
The 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 of Pakistani paramilitary forces, near the city of in .
A keyword search on 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.
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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 (archived link here, here).
A keyword search surfaced an archived version of the video circulating online from Hakkal.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 logo appears in the top-right corner of the clip.
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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 (archived link).
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about Pakistan here.
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