From The Statesman:
For all the years of jihad in Kashmir, the capital of Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir, Muzaffarabad, was the hub of terrorist activity. It had a number of terrorist training camps, far beyond the reach of Indian security agencies. But they have been badly hit by nature.
The fury unleashed by the killer quake, at least, has achieved one thing that both Pakistan and Indian administrations failed to do “” that is to clamp down on terror camps and in particular, the terror infrastructure.
The killer quake has crippled militant training camps in Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir and the North-west frontier province of Pakistan.
As a result of which the Jihad Council, an umbrella organisation of several militant outfits, has also suspended its activities.
This report contradicts the Jihad Council’s directive.
A local Kashmiri newspaper has reported that scores of activists from an Islamic charity linked to a banned Pakistani militant organisation died in the devastating earthquake. Even, the militant group, Lashkar-e-Taiyaba’s offshoot, the Jamat-ud-Dawa’s spokesman said that the charity”s mosques, hospitals, schools and Islamic seminaries were obliterated.
“We have lost many of our members. Several have died, many others are buried under the rubble,” he said.
The Lashkar-e-Taiyaba runs a hospital and a madrasa near Muzaffarabad, which have borne the brunt of the quake’s fury. Twenty kilometres from Muzaffarabad, the Lashkar-e-Taiyaba had three training camps “” Kura, Aksa and Abdullah bin Masood. This was the seat of the Lashkar commander, Zaki ur Rehman.
The militant organisation had also set up three new camps in the hills in the north-west of Manshera, called Umar, Abu Bakr and Umar Bin Auf. Each camp had more than 100 militants, many of whom have been badly reportedly affected by the quake that transcended all artificial boundaries while unleashing its own variant of terror. Even Balakot near Muzaffarabad that had the dubious distinction of being the epicentre of cross-border terrorism and was regarded as the nerve-centre of terror by counter-terrorism experts, has also been hit.