India targets suspected militant organization headquarters in the central region of Pakistan.
Reuters, MURIDKE, Pakistan, May 7 As India bombed its neighbor in retaliation for the deaths of Indian tourists in Kashmir, video footage taken early on Wednesday shows a bright light from the residential Islamic seminary near Bahawalpur in central Pakistan.
The family of Masood Azhar, the founder of the Jaish-e-Mohammed Islamist militant group, reportedly remained at the seminary. However, it had recently been cleared of students as rumors circulated that India would target it.
The Pakistani military reported that 13 persons, including women and children, were killed in the strike, including 10 of Azhar’s relatives. Later in the day, thousands of people gathered at a sports stadium to attend their burials, yelling religious shouts such as “Allah Akbar,” which means “God is Great.”
“(Indian Prime Minister Narendra) Modi’s brutality has broken all norms,” the group stated in a statement. “The grief and shock are indescribable” . According to the report, Azhar’s sister and her husband were among the other victims, with five of them being children. A request for comment on the family’s continued presence at the location was not answered.
The group’s deputy leader, Abdul Rauf Asghar, and his brother, Azhar, who hasn’t been seen in years, didn’t seem to be present during the funeral rites. Following the strike, the site’s road was blocked off.
According to a local government official, four Indian missiles struck a vast compound in Muridke over a period of six minutes further north, some 30 minutes after midnight.
Three persons were buried beneath the debris after the bombing destroyed a nearby administration building and a mosque.
The location is identified as a government health and educational complex by a sign outside, but India claims it is connected to the militant organization Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT). Delhi and Washington hold LeT accountable for the 2008 Mumbai attack, which claimed over 160 lives. LeT, which has has denied responsibility for that attack, is banned.
Other buildings in the complex were unaffected by the attack. Up to 3,500 employees and students typically occupied the location, but in recent days, nearly everyone had been evacuated out of fear that it might be targeted, according to a local official.
The leader of LeT and its offshoot groups, Hafiz Saeed, has been imprisoned in Pakistan since his conviction in 2020 on accusations of financing terrorism. He claims that his network, which includes 300 schools and seminaries, hospitals, a publishing house, and ambulance services, is unaffiliated with extremist organizations.
Delhi claimed to have attacked nine “terrorist camps” with targeted attacks, including two of its militant enemies’ headquarters.
“Pakistan has methodically constructed terror infrastructure over the past three decades,it said in a briefing on the attacks.
According to Pakistan, India struck six locations, killing 26 “innocent civilians” and injuring 46 others.
Islamabad threatened to retaliate, but officials and experts said India’s attack on its neighbor, the biggest in decades, achieved a long-held objective.
The disputed mountainous territory of Kashmir has been the primary focus of the war between India and Pakistan in recent decades. However, Islamabad viewed the airstrikes in the cities of Bahawalpur and Muridke as a significant escalation.
India claimed that the Islamist organizations Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed, both of which the U.N. Security Council has classified as “terrorist” organizations, had exploited seven of its targets. Following the deaths of 26 people in Indian Kashmir last month, the majority of them were tourists, India began the attacks.
Jaish claims that its violent actions are limited to India and that it conducts charitable and educational work in Pakistan. Delhi claims that it sends militants into India and operates brainwashing schools and training camps in Pakistan.
India, which is primarily Hindu, has long accused Pakistan of aiding Islamist militants in their attacks against Indian interests, particularly in Kashmir. Pakistan disputes this support, and New Delhi responds by accusing India of aiding Pakistani separatist militants.