Pakistan military ends standoff with train hijackers

Pakistan's military said it had ended a standoff on Wednesday with separatist fighters who had hijacked a passenger train in the country's southwestern Balochistan province and taken hundreds of people hostage.

The military's spokesperson Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry said 21 hostages and all 33 insurgents were killed.

Dozens of separatist Baloch fighters on Tuesday blew up the railway track and hurled rockets at the Jaffar Express, carrying more than 400 passengers, a security official said.

Some of them wore suicide vests and were seated among the hostages, the government said, complicating rescue efforts.

On Wednesday evening the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA) said it had killed 50 passengers.

The BLA had threatened to start executing hostages unless authorities met its 48-hour deadline for the release of Baloch political prisoners, activists, and missing people it says were abducted by the military.