Claim: A video shows the Pakistani military’s operation against the Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) after the hijacking of the Jaffar Express in Balochistan.
Fact: The video has been on the internet since 2012 and shows an anti-Taliban military operation in Afghanistan, most likely conducted by the US.
On 11 March 2025, the BLA hijacked a passenger train, the Jaffar Express, which was travelling from Quetta to Peshawar, taking hundreds of passengers hostage. On 12 March, the Pakistani military announced the conclusion of a successful operation against the separatist group. According to the Director General of Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), there were a total of 33 terrorists, all of whom were eliminated, but 21 passengers lost their lives prior to the launch of the state’s operation. Moreover, four Frontier Corps personnel lost their lives as well.
On 12 March, a post on X shared a video, alleging that it is drone footage of the Pakistani military eliminating BLA separatists. The caption of the post reads follows:
ماہ رنگ”
@MahrangBaloch_
کے بھائیوں کی پتلونیں اترنے کے مناظر 👇
پاک فوج نے بدمعاش لبریشن آرمی (BLA) کے دہشت گردوں کو کتے کی موت مارا
اور قوم کے کلیجے ٹھنڈے ہوئے
الحمداللہ
I stand with Pak 🇵🇰 Army
#Balochistan
#Balochistanattack
#Balochistan_Rejects_Terrorism
“#JaffarExpress
The caption reads as follows in English:
“Scenes of Mahrang @MahrangBaloch_’s brothers having their pants taken off 👇
Pakistan Army killed the rogue Liberation Army (BLA) terrorists
And the hearts of the nation became cold
Alhamdulillah”
Fact or Fiction?
To verify the claim, Soch Fact Check first ran a reverse-image search of the video’s keyframes. The earliest instance of the video was found on YouTube, uploaded on 20 July 2012, with the title “Apaches Wipe Out Taliban Platoon”.
Next, we found the video as a media file on Wikipedia, titled “File:AH-64 vs. Taliban.ogv”. The webpage also shared an archived link of the video on YouTube, which was dated 27 February 2013. This archived video claimed that the footage shows Taliban militants being targeted in Afghanistan.
An article by Al Madina News from December 2013 claimed that an “American videotape” reveals the footage shows an “attack [that] was carried out by a drone against an Afghan village”.
We also found instances of the same video that claim it shows Apache helicopters firing on a platoon of the Taliban. The first instance is in the form of a GIF from 10 years ago (the website does not specify the exact date). The second instance is in the form of a video from 2017 on Reddit, and the third is a picture from 2018 on Reddit. The third claimed the attack was carried out by a “U.S. special forces patrol” in Afghanistan in 2009.
The footage were also found in articles published by news platforms that appear to report on military-related developments and topics. A still of the video was found in an article by European Security & Defence, a publication based in Germany that “addresses focal aspects of European security and defence”, dated 2019. The article claimed “a US AH-64 APACHE [helicopter] captured this image of a Taliban infantry unit”. The video was also found on Military.com, a “news and information website for U.S. service members, veterans and their families”, with the caption “2 Apaches Engage Taliban Platoon”. The description noted the video was “taken during operations in 2009 in Afghanistan”.
Finally, we found two fact-checks on this video which investigated the claim that it is related to the Jaffar Express hijacking—one by Dawn and another by ABP News. Both fact-checks concluded that the video does not show BLA separatists being defeated by the Pakistani military. They also cited an article by the Daily Mail, dated 2017, which revealed that Russian President Vladimir Putin appears to have shown this footage of the operation to American filmmaker Oliver Stone in an episode of Stone’s 2017 documentary The Putin Interviews.
In the episode, Putin claimed that the footage is of Russian forces operating in Syria, the Daily Mail reported. However, according to the “Conflict Intelligence Team (CIT), a group of Russian researchers who track Russian involvement in military conflicts” the footage is actually from the “US Department of Defense” and is “from either 2009 or 2013, showing anti-Taliban operations in Afghanistan”, the report added. The same article included the CIT’s relevant X post about the source of the footage.
Hence, the claim that this video clip shows the Pakistani military defeating the BLA separatists responsible for hijacking the Jaffar Express is false. Though it is not clear when exactly this footage was shot, it has been available on the Internet since 2012 and shows an operation against the Taliban in Afghanistan, most likely conducted by the US.
Virality
On X, the claim was shared here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
On Facebook, the claim was shared here.
Conclusion: The video in the claim does not show Pakistani military forces defeating the BLA after the recent Jaffar Express hijacking. The video has been on the Internet since 2012 and shows an anti-Taliban operation in Afghanistan, most likely conducted by the US.
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Background image in cover photo: India TV News
