Balakot

[9] Mahtab Singh, a writer of the history of Hazara, writes that Sikhs, to stop the movement from continuing any further, reopened the grave of Syed Ahmad and set the body into the Kunhar River, probably in Talhatta, 10 km down stream.

In another incident, 55th Native Infantry mutineers were trying to seek refuge in Kashmir State, however, they were only able to cross the Indus in Kohistan, and were caught near Lake Dudipatsar by local forces of the Kaghan chiefs, Kohistanis, and Gujjars.

[13] The United Arab Emirates volunteered to rebuild this town into an improved one with housing colonies, schools, hospitals, and other civic facilities.

[18] However, according to analysts, the militants left Balakot after the earthquake in 2005 to avoid detection by the international aid groups arriving to provide relief.

[19] After the earthquake, it was discovered that the city was built on geological fault lines, and the government recommended moving the residents 15 miles away to Bakarial.

[24] In the early morning hours of 26 February, Indian warplanes crossed the de facto border in the disputed region of Kashmir,[25] and dropped bombs in the vicinity of Balakot.

[26][27] Pakistan's military, the first to announce the airstrike on 26 February morning,[28] described the Indian planes as dropping their payload in an uninhabited wooded hilltop area near Balakot.

[30] Analysis of open-source satellite imagery by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensics Laboratory,[31] San Francisco-based Planet Labs,[32] European Space Imaging,[33] and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute,[34] has concluded that India did not hit any targets of significance on the Jaba hilltop site in the vicinity of Balakot.

[35][36] Villagers from the area spoke of four bombs striking a nearby forest and field around 3 am, damaging a building, and injuring a local man.

[39] A team from Al Jazeera visited the site two days after the strikes and noted "splintered pine trees and rocks" which were strewn across the four blast craters.

The reporters located the facility,[40] a school run by Jaish-e-Mohammed, at around a kilometre to the east of one of the bomb craters, atop a steep ridge but were unable to access it.

[40] Reporters from Reuters were repeatedly denied access to the madrassa by the military citing security issues but they noted the structure (and its vicinity) to be intact from the back.

[42] On 10 April, some international journalists, who were taken to the Jaba hilltop in a tightly controlled trip after 45 days of the strike arranged by Pakistani government, discovered the largest building of the site to show no evidence of damage.

[43][44][45][46] The majority of the population is speaker of Hindko and Gujari, Indo-Aryan languages closely related to Punjabi, which are also spoken in the rest of Mansehra district.

Kunhar river flowing through Balakot