Pakistan Army ordered to honor JeM terrorists at funerals, admits top commander

In an explosive revelation, a top commander of the Pakistan-based terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) has claimed that Army Chief General Asim Munir personally directed his troops to attend the funerals of militants killed in India’s missile strikes on the group’s Bahawalpur headquarters on May 7.

JeM commander Ilyas Kashmiri, speaking at a gathering in Punjab’s Mission Mustafa Conference earlier this month, said the directive came straight from Pakistan’s General Headquarters in Rawalpindi to the Corps Commander of Bahawalpur. According to him, senior generals, police officials, and bureaucrats were among those who paid tribute to JeM fighters and family members of chief Masood Azhar killed in the strikes.

In a viral video released on September 18, Kashmiri declared: “After 25 years of struggle, we have brought the state, Pakistan Army, Air Force, and Navy on the jihadi ideology. Those killed on May 7 belonged to JeM, and it was the Army and Air Force that avenged them. Tell me, isn’t it true?”

The strikes — part of India’s Operation Sindoor launched in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam massacre that killed 26 civilians—devastated JeM’s stronghold in Bahawalpur, roughly 400 km from Lahore. Among the dead were ten of Azhar’s family members, including his elder sister, her husband, a nephew and niece, and several children, alongside four close associates.

Another earlier clip released this week showed Kashmiri admitting that Azhar’s family was “torn into pieces” in the Indian strikes. Standing flanked by gun-wielding men, he vowed continued jihad across Delhi, Kabul, and Kandahar.

The revelations underscore the depth of Pakistan’s military establishment’s nexus with proscribed terror groups. Bahawalpur, JeM’s base since Azhar’s release in the 1999 IC-814 hijacking, has long been under Indian and international scrutiny as a breeding ground for cross-border terror.