India conducted a series of airstrikes in Pakistan early on Wednesday, targeting what it claimed were Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad facilities used to plan terrorist attacks on Indian territory, including last month’s assault in Kashmir.
The strikes marked a sharp escalation in tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
Pakistan claimed the Indian attack killed at least 31 civilians and injured 57 and vowed to retaliate. It also claimed to have shot down five Indian fighter jets involved in the attack.
A subsequent exchange of heavy shelling along the Line of Control, the de facto border in Kashmir, killed 13 people on the Indian side, including a soldier.
The Indian defence ministry denied killing civilians and maintained that the strikes, launched between 1.05am and 1.30am, targeted infrastructure meant to plan and direct attacks against India. It claimed that seven of the nine targeted sites were used by Lashkar and Jaish, Islamist groups designated by the United Nations Security Council as terrorist organisations, as well as the Hizb-ul-Mujahideen.
India accuses Pakistan of backing separatism and militancy in Kashmir, the majority Muslim restive Himalayan region claimed in full by both countries but held only in part. Pakistan rejects the claim.
In recent years, Indian officials have blamed either Lashkar or Jaish for most of the deadly attacks in the country, including the 22 April assault at the tourist town of Pahalgam in Kashmir that left 26 people dead, mostly Hindu tourists.
Who are Lashkar-e-Taiba?
Lashkar-e-Taiba, the “Army of the Righteous”, was founded by Hafiz Mohammad Saeed around 1990 as the armed wing of Markaz-ud-Dawa-wal-Irshad, an Islamist missionary organisation in Pakistan established in the 1980s to resist the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
According to the UN, Lashkar has carried out numerous strikes on Indian forces in Kashmir since 1993 as well as major attacks elsewhere in India like the 2008 assault on Mumbai and the 2006 train bombings.
It has been designated a terrorist organisation by the UN and the US. In 2002, Pakistan banned Lashkar and froze all its assets. In 2014, the US expanded sanctions on the group to cover additional leaders and affiliated front groups.
Indian and foreign experts claim Lashkar received training and financial support from Pakistan’s powerful spy agency ISI in the 1990s, allegedly in return for recruiting and training Islamist militants for operations in India. Pakistan has consistently denied any involvement in supporting terrorism.
Islamabad maintains that Lashkar is banned and its founder jailed, but critics say the group continues to operate under the cover of charitable fronts like Jamaat ud Dawa and retains a strong presence.
India said it struck Lashkar’s expansive headquarters in Muridke near Lahore where the Mumbai attackers were allegedly trained.
Who are Jaish-e-Mohammed?
Jaish-e-Mohammad, the “Army of Prophet Mohammad”, was founded by Masood Azhar after his release from an Indian prison in exchange for 155 hostages on an Indian Airlines plane that his associates had hijacked to Afghanistan in 1999.
Jaish, like Lashkar, is based in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
The group was blamed for the 2001 attack on India’s parliament, leading to Pakistan banning it in 2002.
In spite of the ban, Indian and American officials claim that Jaish operates freely in Pakistan. It also maintains links with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, according to the UN.
Jaish has claimed responsibility for several suicide bombings of Indian forces in Kashmir in recent years.
India said it targeted Jaish’s headquarters, Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, in the overnight strikes.
Azhar, while largely out of the public eye, is reported to remain active near Bahawalpur, where he runs a religious institution. He publicly mourned the death of 10 family members killed in India’s strike on Markaz Subhan Allah, a Deobandi seminary in Bahawalpur.
Who are Hizb-ul-Mujahideen?
Hizb-ul-Mujahideen, launched in 1989 reportedly with ISI backing, is the dominant indigenous Kashmiri militant group fighting against Indian rule in the Himalayan region.
Seen as aligned with the Islamist sociopolitical organisation Jamaat-e-Islami, the group advocated for majority Muslim Kashmir to join Pakistan. In recent years, however, its position has been more ambiguous.
In its initial years, its chief ideological competitor was the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, an older militant group which advocated for independence from both India and Pakistan before giving up arms in the mid-1990s.
The Hizb formalised its structure in June 1990, approving its “constitution” and appointing Syed Salahuddin as its leader. Internal divisions over conformity with the ideology of its patron, Jamaat-e-Islami, soon led to a split, however, with one faction led by Syed Salahuddin and the other by Hilal Ahmed Mir, who was killed in 1993.
Kotli in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, which India said was one of the places struck by its forces, reportedly hosts one of Hizb’s oldest facilities.
