News report on damage to terror camp bolsters India's case

Almost a week after the Indian air strike on Pakistan’s Balakot, a news report quoting eyewitnesses claims 35 bodies were transported from the site of a Jaish-e-Muhammad camp hours after the attack. The report is bound to warm the hearts of the Indian government which has struggled to provide evidence of the “very large number” of deaths of JeM fighters in the attack, as claimed by Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale at a briefing hours after the strike on February 25.

The absence of evidence has snowballed into a controversy with opposition parties, sections of the intelligentsia and the social media doubting the government’s version.  West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had gone public asking where was the evidence that the JeM fighters had been killed in the attack.  Television channels in the aftermath of the strike, quoting unnamed government sources, had claimed that 300-350 JeM fighters had been killed. The government officially did not provide any specific numbers other than terming it “a very large number”.

The report in the news portal, quoting eye witnesses at Balakot, said up to 35 bodies were transported from the site by an ambulance hours after the attack. An Italian journalist Francesco Marino who authored the report did not identify the eyewitnesses who are claimed to be working for the local government in Pakistan.

“A former Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) officer known locally as “Colonel Salim” was killed in the bombing, sources said, while a “Colonel Zarar Zakri” was injured. Mufti Moeen, a Jaish-e-Muhammad instructor from Peshawar, and improvised explosive device-fabrication expert Usman Ghani were also killed in the bombing,” the report said, quoting the sources.

The report also adds that the largest single cluster of fatalities were 12 Jaish-e-Muhammad fidayeen trainees, who were living in a single temporary earth-and-wood building which was flattened in the bombing. The report conceded that testimony from witnesses has been conflicting, with them variously saying there were no Jaish-e-Muhammad fighters at Jaba top, and others insisting they were present.

Indian intelligence sources, according to the report, said two of the names mentioned by the eyewitnesses — Usman and Colonel Salim — had also figured in communications intelligence available. At an intelligence assessment meeting held on 1 March, India’s Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) said its communications intelligence could confirm five dead, but placed estimates of the killed in the region of 20.

The Federal could not independently verify the claims made by Francesca Marino, the author of the report. The journalist says she is a specialist of South Asia in her Twitter bio, and has co-authored a book titled ‘Apocalypse Pakistan’. Marino was expelled by Pakistan in 2011 on the charge that she was close to separatists fighting for an independent Baluchistan.