Pakistan’s military accuses neighboring India of sponsoring militants in the restive southwestern Balochistan province, which saw an unprecedented attack this week by armed separatists.

Baloch separatist militants blew up a railway track and launched rockets at the Jaffar Express, which was carrying over 400 passengers.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif went to Balochistan province Thursday to meet with 300 survivors and the troops who rescued them after a Baloch Liberation Army train attack that began Tuesday.

Pakistani officials say insurgents who attacked a passenger train carrying 440 people in the southwest killed 21 hostages but security forces rescued the others.

Mehboob Hussain was riding the train home on Tuesday when the tracks under the front car exploded. In the depths of central Pakistan's Bolan Pass, a pocket of wilderness so remote that there is no internet or mobile network coverage, the nine-coach Jaffar Express ground to a halt. Then the bullets started flying.

Dozens of people rescued from a train hijacked by separatist militants in southwestern Pakistan arrived on Thursday in the city of Quetta, hours after security forces killed all 33 attackers to end a day-long standoff.

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

More than 400 people were on the Jaffar Express on Tuesday when militants fired on the train and blew up the track in the Balochistan region, Pakistani security officials said.

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s neglected southwestern province of Balochistan has been the scene of a yearslong insurgency, with a dramatic uptick in attacks in recent years underscoring the struggles the government in Islamabad faces in dealing with myriad security threats.