Kuwait, Pakistan – In the cold morning on March 11, Saad Qamar wore the white and blue dress, goodbye to his parents and left his house at 7:30 am (06:30 GMT) for the Pakistani railway seil half a kilometer.

The 31 -year -old train driver signed a duty model before examining the engine that he had to hang on the Javar Express heading to Peshawar for his 1600 km trip (994 miles) from the southwestern city of Kuetta in Pakistan to Peshawar in the northwestern Bachuttua Province.

It was an ordinary day. Leave the train with Qamar, the main driver Amjad Yasin, and more than 400 passengers on the plane – just as I always did.

They crossed four stations across the rough mountains of the Bolan Group when he heard a strong explosion that hit the locomotive from the bottom and calms it and the driver.

It was 12:55 pm (07:55 GMT), and drivers knew instinctively that they were being attacked. The armed groups at Jaffar Express targeted earlier, including in January 2023 when a bomb was injured, injuring many passengers and canceling three vehicles of the train. “The driver [Yasin] Qamar applies that the train was applying the emergency brakes.

Throughout the next two days, Jaffar Express will issue headlines not only in Pakistan but around the world, where the Baluchani Liberation Army (BLA), an armed group, claimed the attack, and Passengers carry hostages. The deadly siege was followed by the armed forces in Pakistan, where they tried to liberate the passengers amid a gun battles with BLA fighters.

In the end, more than 300 passengers were rescued, and the army said it had killed 33 fighters, including suicide bombers. According to the media wing of the Pakistani Armed Forces, public relations between services (ISPR), 21 army soldiers and 10 civilians were killed at the end of the bloodiest train in the country.

But after more than three weeks, the memories and horrors of those hours are still chasing a moon.

He tries to save his life

As the train stopped after the attack, Qamar said he knows that his first job is to put wooden pieces under the wheels to prevent them from the trader.

“When I went out and managed to put one wooden shoe, he started gunfire,” he remembered, sitting inside his official residence sponsored by the three -room railways in Kuetta. “Some bullets hit the wheels near me. Climbing drivers asked me to save my life, and we closed the doors of the locomotive.”

According to other witnesses, The attackers targeted the train by shooting RPGs. They started abroad for passengers and separated them based on their races after checking their identity cards.

Qamar managed to inform a railway station close to the attack using a wireless contact system on the train. However, the connection was lost after the driver stopped the engine to avoid the risk of fire; The diesel was leaking from the fuel boxes after penetrating the bullets.

He said, referring to mobile phones: “We were unable to communicate with our family and friends because it was an area without reference.”

Fear of a specific death

Qamar, the largest of its four brothers, was rescued on March 12 at 4:30 pm by the Commandoes of the Semper Services (SSG) group, who transferred it and 135 passengers rescued to Quetta.

By this point, he spent 28 hours at the location of the attack, almost all inside the engine.

Ramadan was continuing, and a moon was fasting. He said: “I had food that my mother gave me, but I broke my fast at dusk with a sip of water and kept my fasting again the next morning with another candidate of water because I did not think about that at that time except to pray to God.”

But he was not the only one who was afraid of his life.

With the army imposing a blackout on communications in the area, rumors spread quickly and rumors throughout Pakistan – including the attackers killed the driver and the auxiliary driver, Qamar.

Until the evening of March 11, the father of the moon, Ghulam Saber, was not aware of the attack. He was fine, and the family did not want to worry the 67 -year -old.

“I felt that something bad had happened because my younger brother and my younger brother were constantly moving with the tense faces, and that the full environment of the railway colony was not normal,” said Saber, who was also working as a Pakistani railway driver for 40 years.

“When I went back from evening prayer, I received a call from a friend who lives in Sibi [a small city south of Quetta]Who asked for the first time, “How is your son Saad?” Because Jaffar Express was attacked and kidnapped near the Paneer Railway Station. “

Speer, who retired from the railway in 2019, rushed to the Railway Control Room in Quetta for more information about his son. But no one has the details of the company. Some officials said that Qamar had died, while others may have been disposed of as a hostage.

The father remained in the control room, waiting for any update. During breakfast the next day, the news was confirmed.

Qamar was alive.

He recalls, “Other drivers and tear employees embrace me in their eyes.”

“Perform your duty”

Pakistan has one of the oldest railway systems in the world, which was presented during British colonial rule in the eighteenth century for weapons transportation and other military equipment near its northwestern and southwestern borders with Afghanistan.

Trains are a reasonable transportation for the majority of Pakistan, which number 244 million and are often full of passengers. This makes them easy targets for armed groups that look forward to provoking attention.

Before this, Differential groups in ethnic peach Multiple attacks on passenger trains, stations, railway paths and bridges in the flying Baluchistan Province were carried out. BLA, which is seeking independence for the largest province of Pakistan, has developed, and claimed responsibility for March 11, which attacked a crowded railway station in November, killing more than 30 people.

However, the last attack was the most bloody – the most daring – in the history of Pakistan.

This was the first time that a moon, in the five years with the railway, found itself in the middle of the attack. When he returned home, his mother tried to persuade him to end the work, but his father pressed him to stay.

Kamar said: “Being a driver or an auxiliary driver, we always try to provide time travel and safe for passengers because we are passenger train leaders and are responsible for hundreds of lives sitting behind us and trust without even knowing.”

Saber, his father, who witnessed three train attacks during his career: “I told my son to perform his duty with courage even after the kidnapping of the train.”

On March 28, Pakistan re -operated the train service linking Balochistan to the rest of the country, after its suspension after the attack.

On Thursday, April 3, Qamar will return to work for the first time since the kidnapping of Jafar Express, on the same train, wears its reliable blue and blue uniform.