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.

Hostages freed after a day-long ordeal following an attack by militants on a train in Pakistan's Balochistan province described crouching on the floor for hours before their release, as the bodies of 25 people killed arrived in Quetta.

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.

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

After more than a day of fighting with separatist militants who hijacked a train carrying hundreds of passengers, Pakistan’s army said it had brought the insurgent attack to an end, but that 21 passengers and four paramilitary personnel had been killed.

Pakistan's military spokesman said on Friday the death toll in a train hijacking in the country's southwestern mountains had risen to 31 and he repeated accusations that neighbouring India and Afghanistan backed the militants who carried it out.

India strongly rejected the unfounded allegations made by Pakistan in the wake of the BLA group's attack on the Jaffar Express train. The Indian government told Pakistan that the world knows where the true "epicentre of global terrorism" lies,