IAF was ready to hit Jaish-e-Mohammed chief Masood Azhar’s house in Bahawalpur: Media report

The Indian Air Force carried out “non-military, pre-emptive” action, destroying Jaish-e-Mohammed’s biggest terror camp in Pakistan’s Balakot on February 26. For the current operation, the agencies picked up the files that had been prepared since 1997. With the addition of technology today, the agencies were able to get clear images of these targets, which also included the terror training facility at Bahawalpur, which incidentally is the home of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief, Maulana Masood Azhar, according to One India report.

India wanted a quick response to the Pulwama attack so the Bahawalpur strike plan was dropped. “Apart from Balakot, we had codified 30 similar camps, all of which were located near army installations in Pakistan. We had managed to piece together all the information regarding these camps and more importantly we were able to show them on maps.

This list was then circulated to agencies across the world and none denied the information. Those were the times, when the problem of terrorism had not hit the European nations as yet. They always felt that it was an internal issue. They would cite their domestic laws and say that they would get involved only if an organisation hurt their domestic security interests,” One India quoted Research and Analysis Wing officer Amar Bhushan as saying.

At least 42 CRPF personnel were killed last month in one of the deadliest terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir when a Jaish suicide bomber rammed a vehicle carrying over 30 kg of explosives into their bus in Pulwama district that also left many critically wounded. More than 2,500 Central Reserve Police Force personnel, many of them returning from leave to rejoin duty in the Valley, were travelling in the convoy of 78 vehicles when they were ambushed on the Srinagar-Jammu highway at Latoomode in Awantipora in south Kashmir.