Radar imagery confirms IAF strike in Balakot destroyed 4 buildings in Jaish-e-Mohammad madrasa: Reports

Earlier, in a statement, India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said that India struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot and that a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action were eliminated but had said that the strikes caused no casualties.

The air strikes in Balakot came 12 days after the Pulwama attack. Forty Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in a suicide attack by Pakistan-based JeM in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14, sparking outrage in the country. (Representative pohoto: PTI)

NEW DELHI: After Indian Air Force bombed and destroyed JeM's biggest training camp in Balakot in Pakistan's restive Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, about 80-km from the Line of Control (LoC), killing terrorists, trainers and senior commanders,  Indian Express reported that Indian Air Force (IAF) hit the four buildings it had targeted inside the campus of Madrasa Taleem-ul-Quran in Balakot. As per Indian Express sources, the buildings were in the campus of the madrasa run by Jaish. The IE sources also said that the assessment of terrorists killed in the attack is “purely speculative”. The air strikes in Balakot came 12 days after the Pulwama attack. Forty Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed in a suicide attack by Pakistan-based JeM in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district on February 14, sparking outrage in the country. It is reported that the facility at Balakot which was destroyed by IAF was headed by Yousuf Azhar, the brother-in-law of the JeM chief. Pakistan Army spokesman Major General Asif Ghafoor, however, had said that the strikes caused no casualties. He had tweeted that Pakistani jets were scrambled and forced the Indian fighter planes to make a "hasty withdrawal", dropping their payload in an open area. “Why did the Pakistan Army seal the madrasa after the strike? Why did it not allow journalists to visit the madrasa? We have evidence in the form of SAR imagery to show that a building used as a guest house, where brother of Maulana Masood Azhar used to stay; an L-shaped building where trainers used to stay; a double-storied building used to house students entering the seminary and another building where those undergoing final combat training used to stay, were hit by the bombs,” an official told The Indian Express. The Indian Express also reported that India has evidence in the form of imagery from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), showing that the four buildings, identified as targets, were hit by five S-2000 precision-guided munition (PGM) fired from IAF’s Mirage-2000 fighter jets.