Quetta : At least four people were killed and 100 others injured on Tuesday when a Rawalpindi-bound train derailed near Aab-e-Gum area, Mach district of Balochistan.
“The Rawalpindi-bound Jaffer Express derailed from its tracks after it left Quetta, killing four people and injuring 100 others,” a Levies source said.
The dead and injured were shifted to a local hospital and further investigations are underway.
This is not the first time that the Rawalpindi-bound train has met with an accident. Earlier this month, four people were killed and another eight injured when the train hit a home-made bomb planted on a railway track in Mastung district of Balochistan on November 1. An improvised explosive device (IED) was remotely detonated when the Jaffar Express chugged into Dasht tehsil of Mastung, 30 kilometres south of Quetta.
Railways Divisional Superintendent Faiz Muhammad Bugti had said the victims, all hailing from Quetta, were travelling to Punjab for holidays. “The four deceased were railway employees,” he added. A Balochistan Levies official said the IED was planted on the railway track in Isplinji area near Dasht. “One of the train carriages was also damaged.”
On June 6, the train was returning to Quetta when an explosion derailed four of its carriages near the Jacobabad district jail, leaving eight people injured. No group immediately claimed responsibility for the attack but Baloch separatists demanding greater autonomy have been waging an insurgency for years and the province is also riven by sectarian strife and extremist violence.
