By Aarti Tikoo Singh
New Delhi/Kabul, Jul 26 (IANS): Pakistani terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammad, which runs its terror activities in Indian Kashmir, has become active in Afghanistan.
In the last two days, at least 13 Pakistani Jaish terrorists were killed by Afghan security forces in the Khogyani district in Afghanistan.
The banned Pakistani terror outfit, headed by Masood Azhar, usually targets civilians and soldiers in Indian Kashmir.
In February 2019, a Jaish suicide bomber blew up an Indian paramilitary bus in Pulwama in south Kashmir, killing over 40 CRPF personnel. India retaliated by launching a surgical strike deep into Pakistan targeting Jaish terror camps in Balakot.
Sources said Pakistan's spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), which trains, arms and sponsors Islamist terror groups, has been reorganising and restructuring terror infrastructure against India and Afghanistan.
In a joint operation, the National Directorate of Security (NDS) and the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF) have killed 13 and captured one Jaish terrorist in Mirza Khel in Khogyani district in Afghanistan. Along with them, 18 Afghan Taliban terrorists were also killed. The operation is still underway, sources added.
On June 29, the Afghan Security Forces (ASF) had destroyed a camp of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) -- another Kashmir-centric terror outfit -- on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and killed two LeT terrorists. One of the two terrorists was Abu Bakr, an LeT commander from Khyber Agency in Pakistan. Talibani terrorists were also present in the camp, sources in Kabul said.
Sources said Afghan intelligence had credible inputs that LeT and Taliban had established camps in Wargah and Tordarah on the border to launch attacks on Afghan forces.
After the operation, several Lashkar and Taliban terrorists fled back to Pakistani side of the border in their vehicles, taking along a high number of casualties.
In June, a UN Security Council report had said that not only do the Taliban and the Al Qaida continue to cooperate with each other, but Kashmir-specific Pakistani terror groups, Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, are sending their trainers to Afghanistan to carry out target assassinations. The report had said that around 6,500 Pakistani terrorists, including 1,000 from Jaish and Lashkar, are present in Afghanistan.
This was followed by a Pentagon report, which said the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region remains a sanctuary for al-Qaeda (AQ), al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) and ISIS-Khorasan (ISIS-K).