Claim: A video clip shows four army helicopters heading to Bolan to counter BLA militants who had hijacked Jaffar Express on 11 March 2025.
Fact: The video is old and unrelated to the Jaffar Express hijacking. It was posted as early as January 2025.
On 11 March 2025, Facebook user ‘Toran Torani’ posted (archive) a video showing four helicopters flying in a mountainous area and linked it to the Pakistani armed forces’ operation after the separatist militant Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked a train carrying hundreds of passengers.
The accompanying caption reads as follows:
“کویٹہ سے متعدد جنگی مشین گن ہیلی کاپٹر بولان کی طرف روانہ حالات گمبھیر دوسری جانب ٹرین میں 100 سے زاہد لوگ یرغمال
[Several attack helicopters armed with machine guns are heading from Quetta to Bolan. The situation is critical. On the other hand, over 100 people are being held hostage in the [Jaffar Express] train.]”
Jaffar Express hijacked
The claim emerged as the separatist militant group Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) hijacked the Peshawar-bound Jaffar Express “in [the] Dhadar area of Bolan Pass” in Balochistan, on 11 March 2025, according to the state-run Radio Pakistan.
The nine-coach train was travelling from Quetta to Peshawar via the Punjab province and had around 450 passengers, Quetta Railways Controller Muhammad Kashif told CNN. Its front portion was attacked first, grounding it to a halt, and its driver, who was initially reported dead, emerged alive.
The BLA demanded the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing persons it claims have been abducted, failing which it would execute the hostages.
In its statement, the Pakistan Army’s media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), said, “The terrorists, after blowing up the railway track, took control of the train and held the passengers hostage including women, children and elderly, using them as human shields.”
The Pakistan Army “successfully eliminated all 33 terrorists” who “took the lives of 21 innocent hostages” as the face-off with the BLA concluded but “4 brave security forces‘ soldiers made the ultimate sacrifice and embraced shahadat [martyrdom]”, the ISPR added.
“Intelligence reports have unequivocally confirmed that the attack was orchestrated and directed by terrorist ring leaders operating from Afghanistan,” the statement read.
ISPR Director-General Lt Gen Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry was quoted in a report as saying the Pakistan Army, Air Force, Frontier Corps (FC), and the Special Services Group (SSG) were part of the operation.
Days later, however, Chaudhry updated the death toll, saying the number had risen to 31, according to Reuters. He had earlier said 354 hostages were safely rescued.
On the other hand, the BLA, which is a proscribed ethnonationalist militant organisation, claimed otherwise, saying it escaped with 214 hostages, including military personnel, and executed all of them.
There were over 150 security personnel aboard, “official sources who did not have permission to speak on the record” confirmed to The Guardian, which added that the BLA had even offered a “prisoner exchange”.
Contrary to the military’s statement, the group asserted that it had released a number of the hostages. Soch Fact Check could not independently verify either party’s claims about the number of hostages and casualties.
A passenger who managed to escape shortly after the BLA attack on the Jaffar Express told the media that the militants “separated women and asked them to leave” and “spared [the] elders”.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office has accused India of being behind the hijacking in Pakistan. These comments were echoed by Pakistan Army later, with spokesperson Chaudhry saying the “main sponsor is eastern neighbour [India]”.
The National Assembly passed a resolution on 13 March strongly condemning the Jaffar Express hijacking and all acts of terrorism.
‘Alarming’ situation in Balochistan
The armed separatist militant group has been regularly targeting railway infrastructure; in August 2024, it blasted off a key railway bridge between Kolpur and Mach. Just a few months later, in November, a BLA-claimed suicide blast at the Quetta Railway Station killed at least 26 people and injured 62.
In its January 2025 report, Islamabad-based think tank Pak Institute of Peace Studies (PIPS) termed the situation in Balochistan “alarming”. The province experienced a sharp rise in terrorist attacks and casualties in 2024, with an 84% increase in attacks compared to the previous year, it said, adding that those carried out by the BLA and the Balochistan Liberation Front (BLF) had shot up 119%.
The BLA is considered the biggest of the many militant groups, who, for the past few decades, have consistently claimed that Pakistan’s federal government unfairly exploits Balochistan’s rich gas and mineral resources. It is also committed to “Balochistan’s complete independence from Pakistan”, according to a profile of the group by Al Jazeera.
Fact or Fiction?
Using keyframes from the viral video as inputs in reverse image search tools, we were able to trace it to various different posts made prior to the Jaffar Express hijacking, linking it to different locations such as Abbottabad and Kurram in Pakistan, as well as Afghanistan.
We came across the earliest instance of the video from 16 January 2025, confirming that it is unrelated to the military’s operation against the BLA militants.
This is further corroborated by a comment under one of the viral X (formerly Twitter) posts carrying the same claim. The user had flagged the video — saying it was old and unrelated to the Jaffar Express hijacking — and provided a screenshot from YouTube that showed it had appeared online as early as January 2025.
Virality
Soch Fact Check found the claim here, here, here, and here on Facebook.
On X, it appeared here, here, here, here, and here. In fact, it was also used by Al Jazeera Arabic in its report on the hijacking.
The claim also surfaced here, here, and here on Instagram, here on Dailymotion, here, here, and here on YouTube, here on TikTok, and here on Threads.
Interestingly, some Turkish media outlets also used the footage by sourcing it from Ihlas News Agency, which wrongly linked it to the Jaffar Express hijacking.
Conclusion: The video is old and unrelated to the Jaffar Express hijacking. It was posted as early as January 2025.
Background image in cover photo: Ayaan Qureshi
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