A Pakistani militant chief targeted in India’s overnight strikes said 10 of his relatives, including five children, had been killed by the attack.
Masood Azhar, the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) – one of two militant factions that India’s military said it targeted overnight – said his older sister, his brother-in-law, his nephew and niece were among those who died.
“The coward Modi targeted innocent children, unmarried women and the elderly,” Azhar said in a statement on Wednesday. “The grief and shock are so much that they cannot be described.”
The Indian military said it targeted “terrorist infrastructure” across nine sites in Pakistan’s densely populated Punjab province and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. India claimed that no military sites were targeted in its strikes and that there had been no reports of civilian casualties.
Pakistan, however, said Wednesday’s strikes had harmed civilians and targeted mosques across six locations in its territory. Jaish-e-Mohammed, which translates to the Army of the Prophet Mohammed, is a Pakistan-based group that operates across Kashmir, and seeks to unite the Indian-controlled area of the disputed state with Pakistan.
While the US and the UN Security Council listed JeM as a terrorist organization in 2001, an effort to include its leader, Masood Azhar, as an “internationally designated terrorist” was vetoed by China.
