In the first official briefing right after the Indian Air Force strike on Pakistan based terror camps on Tuesday morning, Indian Foreign Secretary VK Gokhale said that the strikes were carried out on “the biggest training camp in Balakot”, which he said was being run by Maulana Yusuf Azhar, the brother-in-law of JeM chief, Maulana Masood Azhar.
Without clarifying the number of casualties, Gokhale said that in the strikes were carried out based on an intelligence-led operation “in the early hours of Tuesday, India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation, a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated.”
The Foreign Secretary reminded that Pakistan had made a “solemn commitment in January 2004 not to allow its soil or territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India.”
He emphasised that the outfit was responsible for the attack against the CRPF personnel in Pulwama and urged Pakistan to live up to its public commitment against terrorism and take further actions against JeM and other camps.
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Jaish, Gokhale asserted, was the terror group active in Pakistan for the last two decades, led by Maulana Masood Azhar, whose headquarters are based in Bahawalpur, Punjab province. “This organisation proscribed by UN, has been responsible for a series of terror attacks – the 2001 Parliament attack, the January 2016 Pathankot attack.”
The operation from this morning came barely two weeks after the dastardly terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama, killing 40 innocent CRPF personnel. Indian Air Force carried out a pre-dawn strike on a terror camp across the Line of Control. According to the reports, the strike was carried out at around 3:30 this morning by 12 Mirage 2000 fighter jets.
