NEW DELHI: In the aftermath of ‘Operation Sindoor’, Indian agencies on Thursday confirmed that UN-designated terrorist and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) Masood Azhars brother Abdul Rauf Azhar alias Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar was killed.
Azhar, who is also known to be the mastermind of IC-814 hijacking, was killed in the Indian airstrikes on the Bahawalpur terror hideout.
Terming this a massive success, officials in the agencies said that among those reportedly eliminated in the air strikes is Abdul Rauf Azhar, he operational head of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and a central figure in international jihadist networks.
In the Punjab province, the Indian armed forces carried out air strikes in JeM’s Bahawalpur main centre and Lashkar-e-Taiba's headquarters Muridke and destroyed them, which have for long spilled Indian blood and inflicted injuries upon India.
The officials said, on Wednesday the Indian strikes had killed 10 family members of Masood Azhar in the Bahawalpur strikes, including his sister and brother-in-law and in this regard the JeM had released a statement, but didn’t mention the name of Rauf Azhar.
“Now we have confirmed from our sources in Pakistan that Rauf has been killed in the strikes along with 10 of Masood’s family members and four close associates,” a senior intelligence official said.
“Rauf Azhar’s role in orchestrating the IC-814 hijacking directly facilitated the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a key Al-Qaeda operative, who went on to kidnap and murder Daniel Pearl, an American-Jewish journalist with the Wall Street Journal. Pearl’s brutal execution in 2002 shocked the conscience of the world and remains a defining example of the global threat posed by state-protected terror networks,” the official said.
In 1999 the Indian Airlines plane IC-814 in December was en route from Kathmandu to Delhi and was hijacked by five terrorists of the Harkat-ul-Mujahideen and taken to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. Masood Azhar was also released from a Jammu & Kashmir Jail as part of the swap of passengers on the aircraft.
After the release, Masood Azhar founded JeM, which later carried out several attacks on Indian soil, including the 2001 Parliament attack. The Indian government outlawed JeM, but it continued to operate from Pakistan.