Baloch separatists have repeatedly attacked the Jaffar Express in the last few years. It is commonly used by security personnel, mostly from Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces. The last major attack on the train took place in November when a suicide bomber detonated himself at the Quetta railway station as it prepared to depart.

Separatist militants fired at a passenger train in southwestern Pakistan on Tuesday, injuring a train driver, police and railway officials said.

A security force personnel member stands guard near a train containing empty coffins that are dispatched to Bolan where a passenger train that was attacked by separatist militants, at a railway station in Quetta,