New Delhi: India has strongly denied allegations from Pakistan’s foreign office that it had a hand in the Jaffar Express attack.

Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal dismissed the claims, stating, "We strongly reject the baseless allegations made by Pakistan. The whole world knows where the epicentre of global terrorism lies. Pakistan should look inwards instead of pointing fingers and shifting the blame for its own internal problems and failures on to others."

On Thursday, Pakistan Foreign Office spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan alleged that the rebels involved in the Jaffar Express attack were in contact with ringleaders in Afghanistan.

"India has been involved in terrorism in Pakistan. In the particular attack on Jaffar Express, the terrorists had been in contact with their handlers and ringleaders in Afghanistan," Khan said during his weekly press briefing, according to ANI.

Tensions between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been high due to frequent border clashes and Islamabad’s claims that the Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) has been using Afghan territory to launch attacks in Pakistan — an allegation Kabul denies.

The separatist Balochistan Liberation Army (BLA)- the largest of Balochistan's armed ethnic groups- claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack on the Jaffar Express, during which they blew up train tracks and held passengers hostage in a remote mountain pass.

Pakistan’s military said it had killed 33 attackers and that the siege had ended. 21 hostages and four security personnel were killed in the standoff, they said. However, the BLA refuted the claim, saying in a Thursday statement that it still held hostages and that the battle with security forces was ongoing. The group claimed that 50 hostages had been executed.

The BLA has been fighting a decades-long insurgency for independence in the mineral-rich province, which is home to major China-led projects such as a port and a gold and copper mine.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif visited Quetta on Thursday for a briefing on the security situation.
"No such incident has ever happened in the history of Pakistan," Sharif told a meeting of parliamentarians and military officers in the city.

The BLA claimed that the people Pakistan "claimed" to have rescued were actually released by the group itself. "Now that the state has abandoned its hostages to die, it will also bear responsibility for their deaths," BLA spokesperson Jeeyand Baloch said in a statement on Thursday.