Masood Azhar claims JeM has thousands of suicide bombers in new audio clip

NEW DELHI: A new audio recording, purportedly featuring Maulana Masood Azhar, the elusive chief of the terror outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), surfaced on social media, boasting that his organisation now commands "thousands" of suicide bombers prepared for immediate deployment.

The clip surfaced at a time when Pahalgam mastermind and Lashkar-e-Taiba's deputy chief Saifullah Kasuri was captured on video claiming that the Pakistan army invited him to lead funeral prayers of its own soldiers after Operation Sindoor last May. Both clips were posted on Telegram and X by pro-ISI accounts.

The messages are being viewed as a desperate propaganda attempt to revitalise a group reeling from devastating losses inflicted by Indian security forces during Operation Sindoor. Kasuri's speech was made from a school, with hundreds of children visible in the audience, while Azhar too seemingly addressed a public gathering, sources said.

The latest recording features a defiant Azhar claiming that the sheer number of his followers would "cause an uproar in the global media" if fully revealed. He asserted that these recruits are driven by a fanatical obsession with "martyrdom", explicitly stating that they do not seek material comforts like cars, motorcycles, or foreign visas.

"They only ask Allah for 1 thing: martyrdom," the UN-designated terrorist claimed, attempting to project a picture of high morale and spiritual conviction among his cadres.

However, defence experts suggested this was little more than a "hollow threat" and a sign of severe frustration arising out of Operation Sindoor, a series of precision strikes by India in May 2025 that decimated JeM's infrastructure and eliminated at least 10 of Azhar’s close relatives and top aides in Bahawalpur.

"This audio appears to be a calculated effort to save face after the group’s leadership was "torn to pieces", as recently admitted by other JeM commanders," said a source.

Interestingly, Masood Azhar was not seen in public since a 2019 blast at his Bahawalpur hideout, leading to persistent rumours about his health and location. This latest audio, while lacking visual proof of his life, indicates that the terror mastermind is still attempting to operate from the shadows, deep within a safe haven in Pakistan.

Security agencies are now closely analysing the voice samples and metadata of the clip to track its origin and assess the current threat level posed by the group’s surviving sleeper cells, sources said.