Azhar family ‘torn into pieces’ during India's Operation Sindoor, admits JeM commander

New Delhi: Pakistan on Monday admitted that India has maintained disputes between the two countries are bilateral, with foreign minister Ishaq Dar claiming Islamabad never asked for third-party mediation, even as a top terror leader said that the family of Jaish-e-Mohammad chief Masood Azhar suffered huge losses in Indian strikes on terror camps during Operation Sindoor.

In an interview with Al Jazeera, Dar said, "We never asked anybody for a ceasefire." Dar recalled that during May, shortly after India launched Operation Sindoor, he was told by a US official that there would "very soon (be) dialogue between you and India at an independent place". However, when he met in Washington on July 25, he said: "I asked him what happened to those dialogues, but he said India says it is a bilateral issue."

"We don't mind bilateral, but the dialogues have to be comprehensive. It will have dialogue on terrorism, dialogue on trade, on economy, on Jammu and Kashmir, all these subjects which we both have been discussing," Dar said.


Admitting serious losses to terror groups in Pakistan by the Indian forces during Operation Sindoor, a senior terror commander said the family of Jaish-e-Mohammad leader Masood Azhar was "torn into pieces in the missile strikes at Bahawalpur". In a video circulating on the internet, JeM commander Masood Ilyas Kashmiri can be heard speaking on the Indian Operation and the heavy toll it caused at the terror outfit's headquarters.

"Embracing terrorism, we fought Delhi, Kabul and Kandahar for protecting the borders of this country. After sacrificing everything, on May 7, Maulana Masood Azhar's family was torn apart by Indian forces in Bahawalpur," Masood Ilyas Kashmiri is heard as saying, surrounded by heavily armed militants around him.

The terror outfit, which has been operating for decades and fomenting unrest in Kashmir and sending terrorists to perpetrate violence, was one of the targets of the Indian strikes. Both JeM and Lashkar-e-Taiba were hit hard by Indian forces in the aftermath of the Pahalgam terror attack. The headquarters of both the outfits were decimated and training camps targeted.