Pakistan railway track hangs off bridge after attacks

Railway workers clear the wreckage of a collapsed railway bridge the morning after a blast by separatist militants at Kolpur in Bolan district, Balochistan province on August 27, 2024. (AFP)

Security personnel inspect a collapsed railway bridge the morning after a blast by separatist militants at Kolpur in Bolan district, Balochistan province on August 27, 2024. (AFP)

• The colonial-era bridge was blown apart on Monday, with a section of a fallen track blocking a motorway below and another hanging from a damaged column

KOLPUR: The mangled track of a Pakistan railway line hung over a dry river bed on Tuesday, after it was targeted in a series of coordinated attacks that killed dozens of people.
The colonial-era bridge — a key link between Balochistan province and the rest of the country — was blown apart on Monday, with a section of a fallen track blocking a motorway below and another hanging from a damaged column.
Separatist militants killed dozens on Monday in several early morning attacks in the province which included taking control of a highway and shooting dead 23 people, mostly from Punjab province.
Six people traveling on the motorway near to the Kolpur bridge were also shot dead after militants checked their IDs, according to government officials.
“Explosives were used to attack our main bridge routes yesterday, which has stopped trains from traveling to other parts of the country,” Muhammad Kashif, a senior railway official in Balochistan, told AFP.
“We’re working to clear the road as quickly as possible to ease traffic for the public,” he said.
“We do not know how much time it would take to restore the bridge in Bolan.”
The fallen tracks and rubble from the bridge that blocked the road below was being cleared by authorities.
“It’s a steep mountainous area and fear is natural, but the journey has to go on. We often pass through here in a convoy of three or four vehicles,” a truck driver from the neighboring province of Sindh told AFP, while waiting for the road to reopen.
The Balochistan Liberation Army, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, is waging a war of independence against the state, which it accuses of unfair exploitation of resources by outsiders in the mineral-rich region.
Balochistan, which borders Afghanistan and Iran, is Pakistan’s poorest province, lagging behind the rest of the country in education, employment and economic development.
The BLA’s operation mostly targeted Punjabis, the largest and most dominant ethnic group in Pakistan.
Security forces have been battling sectarian, ethnic and separatist violence for decades in impoverished Balochistan, but the coordinated attacks that took place in several districts throughout the province were one of the worst in the region’s history.