The Baloch Liberation Army has claimed that 82 Pakistani military personnel were killed and more than 121 injured in Sunday’s attack on a military shuttle train near Chaman Phatak, on the outskirts of Quetta Cantonment railway station.
In a detailed statement, BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch said the attack was carried out through what the group described as a “highly complex, organized, and joint operation” by its Majeed Brigade, the group’s “fidayee” unit, and its intelligence wing, ZIRAB.
The BLA said the target was a specific military shuttle train transporting Pakistani army personnel from Quetta Cantonment to be attached to the Jaffar Express.
It added that those killed and injured included JCOs, NCOs, regular soldiers and newly recruited personnel from several army units, including the Frontier Force Regiment, Baloch Regiment, EME Centre, Infantry School, Cavalry, Punjab Regiment, Field Artillery, Signals and Medium Artillery regiments.
The group said the operation was carried out by Bilal Shahwani, also known as Saahin, whom it described as a “fidayee” commander of the Majeed Brigade.
According to the statement, the attack struck at what the BLA called the Pakistani military’s “new and clandestine travel protocol”, which it said had been introduced after the Jaffar Express hijacking and the 9 November 2024 attack at Quetta railway station by Majeed Brigade member Rafiq Bizenjo Baloch.
The BLA said the November attack had “paralyzed the enemy’s traditional defense structure”, after which the Pakistani military changed the way it transferred personnel from public railway stations in an attempt to keep them out of reach of BLA fighters.
Under the new arrangement, the statement said, four to five railway carriages were moved inside the high-security zone of Quetta Cantonment under cover of night, a few hours before the Jaffar Express was due to depart. In the morning, military personnel going on leave or reporting for new deployments boarded those carriages inside the cantonment.
“These carriages were then formed into a military shuttle train powered by a separate locomotive and brought out of the Cantonment to the Quetta railway station exactly half an hour before the Jaffar Express’s departure to be attached to the passenger train,” the statement said.
The BLA statement said the Pakistani military assumed that by using the internal infrastructure of the cantonment, it could shield troop movement from the group’s fighters.
The statement further claimed that the military had begun constructing high-security walls on both sides of the track from the cantonment to the railway station to isolate the shuttle route from external threats.
It said Quick Response Force personnel were deployed daily with heavy weapons near Koila Phatak and the Pishin Stop bridge before the train’s arrival, while foot patrol units moved from the permanent military post at Chaman Phatak to secure the area.
“All these measures,” the BLA said, showed that the Pakistani military had shifted from traditional security methods to what it described as a defensive posture.
The group said ZIRAB had conducted long-term reconnaissance of the altered security network, timing schedules and covert internal communications before the attack, adding that the operation showed what it called the intelligence wing’s “deep access inside secure military zones and decision-making structures.”
“The operation was designed with such meticulous precision in terms of military science and timing that if there had been a variance of even five minutes earlier or later in its planning and execution, targeting the enemy forces would have been impossible,” the statement said.
The statement said Bilal Shahwani crossed all military and security cordons and carried out the attack at around 8am, as the military shuttle train crossed Koila Phatak and reached Chaman Phatak.
“A total of 336 personnel of the occupying army were aboard the train, and the attack instantly neutralized the defensive capabilities of the 74 heavily armed personnel within the ranks, rendering their 7,320 live rounds and all other military hardware useless within seconds,” the statement said.
The BLA rejected official accounts describing the casualties as civilians, accusing Pakistani state media and officials of trying to present military casualties as civilian deaths. The statement said the Pakistani army was attempting to conceal what the group described as a “humiliating intelligence failure” and the breach of the fortified cantonment security perimeter by building what it called “a false narrative of victimhood before the world”.
“The BLA completely rejects this fabricated narrative with full political and moral force… the targeted train was not a regular passenger train but a specific military shuttle dedicated solely to transporting military personnel from the restricted zone of the Cantonment,” the statement said.
The group said civilian entry into the area was prohibited, “let alone approaching the track itself”, and that Sunday morning had been selected to reduce the likelihood of civilian movement near the target.
The BLA also said attacks on civilians and non-combatants were against its policy, describing its targets as limited to the military, its subsidiary institutions, the administration, alleged state-backed armed groups and projects it accuses of exploiting Baloch resources.
In the final part of the statement, the group framed Shahwani’s role as evidence of what it called the BLA’s “institutional evolution and ideological superiority”, saying the decision of an experienced field commander to volunteer for a “fidayee” mission showed the organisation had moved beyond traditional guerrilla methods.
“This choice demonstrates that the Baloch national resistance has advanced far beyond traditional guerrilla methods into a modern, scientific, and formal military structure…” the statement said, adding that commanders were prioritising “collective national objectives over individual material roles and life itself”.
The BLA said Shahwani’s action would be preserved as “a universal principle of the political and military struggle of oppressed people”, adding that the “modern material network” of an “occupying state could only be countered through deep ideological discipline, intelligence access, eternal sacrifice, and strategic resolve”.
The BLA said the attack showed that Pakistan, “no matter how high it raises walls or alters security protocols on Baloch soil”, could not stop what it described as the resolve of the Baloch national army.
“Our organized, principled, and ideological war will continue with full intensity until the establishment of complete Baloch sovereignty and final independence on Baloch soil,” the statement concluded.