Lahore, 16 Sept

A Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) commander has admitted that the family of the terror group's chief Masood Azhar was "torn into pieces" in the Indian missile strikes on 7 May on the outfit's headquarters in Bahawalpur, Pakistan.

In a viral video uploaded to a YouTube channel on Tuesday, JeM commander Ilyas Kashmiri can be heard fuming over the Indian attack that killed the family members of Azhar and also bragging about fighting in neighbouring countries for Pakistan.

Kashmiri is reportedly speaking in Urdu at the Mission Mustafa Conference in Pakistan's Punjab province on 6 September.

Standing among several gun-wielding men, he said: "To protect the ideological and geographical boundaries of this country, we hit (wage a jihad in) Delhi, Kabul and Kandhar. And after sacrificing everything, on 7 May, Maulana Masood Azhar's family members in Bahawalpur were torn into pieces (in Indian strikes)."

Tensions between India and Pakistan soared after terrorists killed 26 people, mostly civilians, in Jammu and Kashmir's Pahalgam on 22 April.

In a powerful retaliation to the Pahalgam massacre, Indian armed forces carried out missile strikes on the terror targets, including Bahawalpur, a stronghold of the JeM terror group, on 7 May as part of Operation Sindoor.

A statement attributed to Azhar had said that India’s attack on Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, some 400-km from Lahore, resulted in the death of 10 of his family members and four close associates.

Those killed included Azhar's elder sister and her husband, a nephew and his wife, another niece, and five children from his extended family.

The statement further mentioned that the attack also claimed the lives of one of Azhar’s close associates and his mother, along with two other close companions.

The Pakistan Army generals, senior police officers, and top bureaucrats had attended the funerals of those killed in Indian strikes.

Bahawalpur became the hub of the JeM after the release of Azhar in exchange for the hijacked passengers of IC-814 in 1999.

In May 2019, the United Nations designated Azhar a "global terrorist" after China lifted its hold on a proposal to blacklist the JeM chief, a decade after New Delhi approached the world body for the first time on the issue.

The elusive Azhar, who has not been seen in public since April 2019, is believed to be hiding in a "safe place" in Bahawalpur.

The group has been involved in a series of terror attacks in India, including the Parliament attack in 2001, the strike on the Jammu and Kashmir assembly in 2000, the attack on the IAF base in Pathankot in 2016 and the Pulwama suicide bombing in 2019.