Three days after the terror attack on a General Engineering Reserve Force (GREF) camp in Jammu district’s Akhnoor sector in which three contractual labourers were killed, Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed has been caught on tape boasting that four Pakistani mujahideen carried out the attack, describing it as a “surgical strike”.
Saeed stated this while addressing hundreds of Jamaat-ud Dawa activists at an “orientation session” on Wednesday in Muzafarrabad in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, says a Hindustan Times report.
Hafiz Saeed said that four "mujahideen" attacked an Indian military camp in the Jammu region on Monday, and had "returned safely, having suffered not a scratch".
“Four young men, day before yesterday in the evening, entered the camp at Akhnoor, Jammu. I am talking about something recent, it’s not an old event, it happened two days ago,” Hindustan Times quoted Saeed as saying.
“They entered the army camp, the young men say they cleaned up 10 camps of Indian troops and all four of them returned safe and secure, they were not harmed. Yeh eik kirdar hai, yeh hai surgical strike,” he added.
While he refrained from stating whether the Akhnoor attackers belonged to the Lashkar-e-Taiba, Saeed boasted that this was a response to the surgical strikes carried out by the Indian Army in retaliation for the terror attack on an Army camp in Uri in September in which 19 jawans were martyred.
“Modi also talked about a surgical strike, I had replied to Modi. Nawaz Sharif doesn’t reply to Modi, I reply to Modi, by the grace of God. And he (Modi) only accepts my reply, not the reply of anyone else,” said Saeed.
“I said Modi you made a false claim, Indian troops are being dropped by helicopter and they ran a movie. They are very good at making magnificent movies. Movies are one thing, fighting is another, so they ran a movie about carrying out surgical strikes, we crossed the border and killed 40 jawans of Lashkar-e-Taiba and went back. This was a drama, a film made to fool the world,” he added.
Talking about the terror attack at the GREF camp in Akhnoor, he said, “I am telling you about the strike carried out two days ago, in a place like Jammu where they say nobody dares to enter. Four mujahid entered the camp, cleaned up 10 rooms and killed 30 soldiers. They destroyed the camp, burnt it and all four came back safely.”
Hafiz Saeed, who is a major irritant in the already strained relationship between India and Pakistan, is actively involved in spewing venom against New Delhi.
Hafiz Saeed is wanted by India and the US for his alleged role in masterminding the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai that claimed 166 lives. He even carries a bounty of USD 10 million (over Rs 66 crore) on his head for his role in the attack.
While Pakistan claims to have banned Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) in 2002, following an attack on the Indian Parliament, it re-emerged as Jamat-ud Dawa (JuD). The United States has designated the JuD as a front for the LeT.
