Masood Azhar’s brother critically injured in Indian airstrikes, being treated at military hospital: Sources

Masood Azhar's brother, who is also the second-in-command of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), was critically injured in Indian airstrikes carried out under Operation Sindoor in Pakistan’s Bahawalpur, intelligence sources have confirmed to India Today. He is currently receiving treatment at a Pakistani military hospital.

The development comes after JeM chief Masood Azhar issued a statement confirming that 14 members of his family and four of his close aides were killed in the Indian strikes. According to a report by BBC Urdu, the dead include Azhar’s elder sister, her husband, his nephew and his wife, another niece, five children, his mother, and three key aides.

The Indian Air Force launched Operation Sindoor in the early hours of Wednesday, striking nine high-value terror sites across Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The 25-minute operation, India’s most extensive cross-border strike since Balakot, was carried out in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack, which left 26 civilians, mostly tourists, dead.

One of the key targets was the JeM stronghold in Bahawalpur, Punjab—a city long considered the nerve centre of the group’s operations. Indian missiles struck the Subhan Allah complex, which houses JeM’s Jamia Masjid and is locally known as the Usman-o-Ali campus. Visuals accessed by India Today confirmed widespread destruction at the site, with major structures reduced to rubble.

The Bahawalpur facility has served as JeM’s main training and indoctrination hub for decades. Intelligence reports indicate that it was at this very location—Markaz Subhanallah—that the Pulwama suicide bombing of February 2019, which killed 40 CRPF personnel, was planned.

Masood Azhar, a UN-designated global terrorist, founded JeM in January 2000 with the backing of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Osama bin Laden, and Taliban leaders. He was released by India in 1999 in exchange for the passengers of the hijacked IC-814 Indian Airlines flight.

India's strikes under Operation Sindoor also targeted other high-value locations, including the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s Muridke base in Pakistan’s Punjab, the JeM camp at Sarjal Tehra Kalan in Narowal, and multiple terror sites in PoK—such as Kotli, Muzaffarabad, Barnala, and Sialkot. According to officials, the targets were selected based on credible intelligence and were camouflaged as civilian facilities to evade international scrutiny and Financial Action Task Force (FATF) oversight.

The Indian Defence Ministry said in a statement, "A little while ago, the Indian Armed Forces launched 'Operation Sindoor', hitting terrorist infrastructure in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Jammu and Kashmir from where terrorist attacks against India have been planned and directed." It added that India had "demonstrated considerable restraint in the selection of targets and method of execution."

Pakistan’s military spokesperson confirmed to BBC that Bahawalpur and Muridke were among the locations hit in the Indian airstrikes.

As details continue to emerge, the confirmation of Masood Azhar’s brother being critically wounded, and the death of multiple family members, marks a major blow to JeM’s leadership structure—raising further questions about the group’s operational continuity and Pakistan’s continued sheltering of globally designated terrorists.