JeM strikes had almost sparked 2 Indo-Pak wars

New Delhi: Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammad’s (JeM) deadly terror attack in Pulwama on February 14, was part of its ‘Ghazwa-e-Hind’ (Holy War Against India) against India. At least 40 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel were killed when a suicide bomber rammed his car, laden with explosives, into the CRPF convoy on the Srinagar-Jammu highway on February 14.

The JeM had taken responsibility for the attack in a statement to a local news agency in Kashmir. The group had also identified the suicide bomber as a resident of Kashmir’s Pulwama. The most deadly terror strikes of the JeM in the past 20 years include attacks on the Pathankot airbase, the Army brigade headquarters in Uri, the Badamibagh cantonment in Srinagar and the bombing of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly, sources said.

India and Pakistan were almost on the brink of war in 2001 when the JeM attacked the Indian Parliament, and again now after the February 14 suicide attack in Pulwama, said a security official. The terrorist group, with close links with al-Qaida, had resolved at a conference held in Okara district in Pakistan on November 27, 2017, that it would continue its “Ghazwa-e-Hind” irrespective of the Indo-Pak ties, the official said citing an intelligence report. The JeM, which had close links slain al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, was formed after the release of terror mastermind Masood Azhar from an Indian jail on December 31, 1999 after the Indian Airlines flight IC-814 was hijacked on December 24, 1999.

Azhar was released along with rouge British secret service MI6 agent Omar Shaikh, who was responsible for the killing The Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in January 2002 and the funding of 9/11 terror attacks in the US.