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Posts from several Indian accounts on social media platform X on Tuesday shared a video of a train explosion, claiming that it showed the attack on a Jaffar Express train that was hijacked by the proscribed Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA) group the same day near Bolan district. However, the footage shared dated as far back as April 2022 and is entirely unrelated to the current attack.
A day ago, terrorists attacked the Jaffar Express train travelling from Quetta to Peshawar and took almost 400 passengers hostage, including around 200 security personnel.
The BLA claimed responsibility for the attack, which claimed the lives of at least 10 people, including the driver of the train.
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On the other hand, security forces confirmed that they had launched an operation in the Dhadar area of Bolan Pass to rescue the hostages, killing at least 16 of the attackers.
The same day, an account on X, which is an Indian account based on the news updates shared on their feed, posted a video of a train being attacked and exploding near a mountainous area.
The post’s caption said, “Train hijack in Pakistan. Jaffar Express from Quetta to Peshawar hijacked after IED blast by Baloch rebels. BLA fighters have taken 182 people hostage after seizing the Jaffar Express. Eleven Pakistani soldiers have been killed.”
The video, which also features a BLA logo in the top right corner, received over 654,000 views and was shared 2,100 times.
Another Indian user, who according to their bio works as a sub-editor for far-right Indian media outlet OpIndia that is known to spread misinformation, shared the video with bullet points describing the details of the incident.
The user added the hashtags of “Balochistan”, “train hijack” and “Jaffar Express” to the post, which gained over 100,000 views.
The same video and claim were widely shared by several other Indian accounts as can be seen here, here, here, here and here, gaining over a combined 137,000 views.
Moreover, Chinese publications also reported on the attack and used visuals from the video as can be seen here, here and here.
A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its high virality, significant public interest and concern about the details and visuals of the attack and the manner in which the video was being shared by Indian accounts that was suggestive of online brigading.
An immediate visual analysis of the video highlighted a factual discrepancy since it showed the explosion in an open outside environment while the attack on the Jaffar Express train happened near a tunnel, according to media reports.
A reverse image search yielded the same video in an X post, dated April 15, 2022. The post also mentioned BLA attacking security personnel as the caption said, “The BLA has apparently attacked a train carrying Pakistani soldiers.”
A further keyword search for more posts from that timeframe yielded another X post from the same date with the same video that said: “BLA has released footage of an IED attack on train carrying Frontier Corps near Sibbi, Balochistan.”
Details of the alleged incident could not be verified and a keyword search did not yield news reports on the attack the video was associated with.
However, the dates of the X posts from 2022 confirmed that the footage was old and entirely unrelated to the Jaffar Express attack.
Therefore, the fact-check determined that the claim that a video shows the BLA attack on a Jaffar Express train in Balochistan was false. The footage was shared online at least as far back as April 2022 and is thus entirely unrelated to the Jaffar Express train attack.
This fact check was originally published by iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP.