LeT commander admits Markaz Taiba camp in Muridke destroyed in Operation Sindoor

After a Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander admitted that a strike severely harmed Masood Azhar’s family, another video has surfaced featuring Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Qaasim, confirming the destruction of the Markaz Taiba camp in Muridke, Punjab, directly contradicting Islamabad’s denials of the strikes.

The video shows Qaasim standing amid the rubble of the destroyed camp, vowing to rebuild a much larger facility. He admitted that numerous terrorists had been trained at the site, including “Mujahideens and Talaba,” who, he claimed, went on to achieve “victory” (Faiz).

Advertisement

“I am standing in front of the Markaz Taiba in Muridke… It was destroyed in the attack during Operation Sindoor. We will rebuild it and make it even bigger. From here, many Mujahideen were trained and went on to achieve Faiz [victory],” the LeT commander said in the video, ANI reported.

Qaasim publicly admitted to the camp’s destruction just days after Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) commander Masood Ilyas Kashmiri, in another viral video, confessed that the strikes on Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, JeM’s headquarters, during Operation Sindoor had killed the family members of JeM chief Masood Azhar.

In May, the news agency reported that India’s strikes killed top relatives of Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) chief Masood Azhar. Among them was Mohammad Yusuf Azhar, Masood Azhar’s brother-in-law and a key accused in the IC-814 hijacking case. He was also responsible for weapons training and several terror attacks in Jammu and Kashmir.

Another casualty was Hafiz Muhammed Jameel, Azhar’s eldest brother-in-law, who ran the Markaz Subhan Allah centre in Bahawalpur. He was deeply involved in radicalising youth and raising funds for JeM.
A viral video later showed a JeM commander admitting that “the family members of Masood Azhar were torn into pieces in Bahawalpur on May 7,” confirming that the strikes hit high-value targets.

In another video, Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) commander Qaasim openly called on youth to join the Daura-e-Suffa programme, which provides combat training and jihadi indoctrination—further exposing the true nature of these camps.

Markaz Taiba in Muridke, set up in 2000, is LeT’s main training hub, offering arms training, physical drills, and religious radicalisation for recruits from Pakistan and abroad. Similarly, Markaz Subhan Allah in Bahawalpur, active since 2015, serves as JeM’s headquarters for training, indoctrination, and terror planning, including the 2019 Pulwama attack.

The May 7 strikes under Operation Sindoor targeted nine terror bases including headquaters of JeM and LeT. The operation was launched in retaliation for the April 22 Pahalgam terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir, which killed 26 people.

Advertisement