Indian intelligence agencies have received inputs that about 45-50 terrorists, including suicide bombers, are being trained at the reactivated Balakot terror camp inside Pakistan.
The facility was reportedly destroyed by the Indian Air Force in an unprecedented air strike in February this year.
"Around 45-50 suicide bombers are training inside the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist camp in the Balakot town of Pakistan", top government sources told the Indian news agency ANI.
Intelligence agencies also received inputs that some of the trained terrorists have already entered Indian territory. Last week, a red alert was issued across Indian airports after reports suggested that four terrorists from the proscribed militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed’s had entered Delhi. Indian intel agencies have been tracking the activities at the camp using its surveillance capability at the National Technical Research Organisation.
In September, Indian Army chief General Bipin Rawat and Defence Minister Rajnath Singh claimed that the alleged terror camp operated by Jaish was reactivated seven months after the bombing in the Balakot area.
The air strike was carried out by Indian forces to avenge the 14 February suicide attack by Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists on a convoy of Indian troops in the Pulwama area of Jammu and Kashmir that killed 40 security personnel.
Pakistan's government has termed the latest claim of terrorists reactivating in Balakot baseless, saying that it “reflects a desperate attempt to divert international attention from the humanitarian nightmare in occupied Kashmir being perpetrated by Indian forces”.
Relations between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours nosedived, and reached a flashpoint when India abrogated the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state of its temporary special quasi-autonomous status that had existed for seven decades.
