Just three days after a terror attack on an Indian army facility in Akhnoor, Lashkar-e-Taiba founder Hafiz Muhammad Saeed has been caught on tape boasting that four Pakistani mujahideen carried the attack. He is even heard calling the attack a “surgical strike”.
Saeed was heard saying this while he was addressing a gathering of thousands of Jamaat-ud-Dawah ( JuD ) operatives in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, on Wednesday. The United States of America has designated the JuD as a front for the LeT.
While Saeed is heard speaking about an attack on an army camp, there was an attack instead on GREF platoon in Batla at 1:15 am on Monday where three labourers were killed.
The Urdu tape records Saeed saying, “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”, according to a report published in Hindustan Times.
“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”, Saeed says further in the clip that runs slightly over two minutes, also reported in Hindustan Times.
Saeed described the attack as a retaliatory action against the surgical strikes carried by the Indian forces against the Uri attacks in September 2016. He, however, refrained from stating if these men belonged to the LeT.
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.Hafiz 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”, said Saeed, according to the Hindustan Times report.
The same report records him saying, “But you have given an opportunity and the mujahideen will tell you what is a surgical strike…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.”
Saeed is the mastermind behind the November 2008 Mumbai attacks that killed 166 people. Since then, he is wanted by India. He was also placed under house arrest after India’s financial hub was attacked by LeT operatives. However, the Lahore high court freed him after a brief period of time.
(Source: Hindustan Times)
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