The train hijacking in south-western Pakistan represents a major escalation in the region’s long-running insurgency.

The Balochistan Liberation Army claims it killed 6 security forces and seized a Pakistani passenger train carrying about 500 people in a remote, mountainous region.

A group of militants seized a Peshawar-bound train, igniting a 36-hour hostage crisis, but this attack is part of a decades-long insurgency rooted in the Baloch separatist groups' violent struggle for an independent state.