A senior Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) commander, Masood Ilyas Kashmiri, has made a public and rare admission that members of Maulana Masood Azhar’s family were killed during India’s Operation Sindoor, carried out on May 7, 2025. The video, which has gone viral, features him describing how Indian forces struck their hideout in Bahawalpur, stating that Azhar’s family were “torn into pieces.”

Operation Sindoor was India’s coordinated overnight assault on nine terror infrastructure sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir, launched in response to a terror attack in Pahalgam that killed 26 civilians. Bahawalpur, housing JeM’s operational headquarters, was one key target.

Azhar himself earlier acknowledged that in the strike on his group’s Bahawalpur HQ (Jamia Masjid Subhan Allah), 10 of his family members and four close associates were killed. Among the dead: his elder sister and her husband, a nephew and his wife, a niece, five children, his mother, and others close to him.

The admission by Kashmiri is significant because terror groups rarely publicly confirm specific losses especially involving leadership family members. The claim adds to the pressure around cross-border operations and counterterror strategy, while underscoring the human cost and potential intelligence value of precise targeting.