Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) chief Masood Azhar has admitted that 10 members of his family and four close associates were killed in Indian strikes on the terror outfit’s headquarters in Bahawalpur, Pakistan. The admission came through a statement issued by Azhar and reported by BBC Urdu and PTI on Wednesday, a day after India launched Operation Sindoor, its targeted retaliation to the Pahalgam massacre.
According to the statement, those killed in the strike on the Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah campus included Azhar’s elder sister and her husband, a nephew and his wife, another niece, and five children from his extended family. Also among the dead were a trusted aide of Azhar and his mother, along with two other close companions.
The Subhan Allah complex in Bahawalpur was one of the key targets in the coordinated Indian military operation that began at 1:05 am on Tuesday. It was one of two high-impact hits as part of India’s cross-border strike on terror infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The Indian forces targeted nine locations linked to Jaish-e-Mohammad, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Hizbul Mujahideen in response to the April 27 Pahalgam terror attack, in which 26 people — mostly tourists — were gunned down by Pakistan-backed terrorists. Bahawalpur, the 12th largest city in Pakistan and located roughly 400 km from Lahore, has long served as the epicentre of JeM’s activities.
The Bahawalpur strike was particularly significant as the Subhan Allah campus, also referred to as the Usman-o-Ali campus, functioned as JeM’s ideological and operational hub. Spread across 18 acres, the campus housed a mosque and facilities used for recruitment, indoctrination, and fundraising.