JeM operational head Abdul Rauf Azhar, who orchestrated Kandahar hijacking, killed in Operation Sindoor: Reports

UN-designated terrorist and founder of Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) Masood Azhar's brother Abdul Rauf Azhar alias Mufti Abdul Rauf Asghar, operational head of JeM, was reportedly among the terrorists killed in the Indian airstrikes against terror hideouts in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir on Wednesday.

Nine terror sites, including that of Jaish-e-Mohammad and Lashkar-e-Taiba, were targetted by India, in retaliation for the Pahalgam massacre in which terrorists killed 26 civilians.

After the strikes—Operation Sindoor—Masood Azhar claimed that 10 of his family members, including his older sister and her husband, his nephew and his nephew's wife, were killed.

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Now, media reports claim that Abdul Rauf Azhar too was killed in the strikes.

“Among those reported eliminated is Abdul Rauf Azhar — operational head of Jaishe-Mohammad, mastermind of the IC-814 hijacking, and a central figure in international jihadist networks," News18 quoted officials as saying.

Abdul Rauf Azhar had orchestrated the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC-814 in 1999, which led to the release of several militants including his brother Masood Azhar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Omar Saeed Sheikh was later involved in the kidnapping and beheading of Wall Street Journal journalist Daniel Pearl in Karachi.

“Rauf Azhar’s role in orchestrating the IC-814 hijacking directly facilitated the release of Omar Saeed Sheikh, a key Al-Qaeda operative who went on to kidnap and murder Daniel Pearl, an American-Jewish journalist with the Wall Street Journal," News18 quoted officials as saying.

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