PKONWEB Report — One of the several takeaways of Pakistan’s post-Pulwama attack is out in the public glare through a published report– three months later after India election.
The report on one of them appears now and weeks after (India election) a senior Pakistani defense official told PKonweb on condition of anonymity that two top-level Indian Army commanders were present at the locale where Pakistan Air Force (PAF) jets flew across the Line of Control (LoC0 in retaliation, and locked in six targets– meaning the fighters unloaded their arsenal very close to the targets and avoided casualties.
“It’s a confirmed news, we knew it since 27 February,” the official said when asked to comment on the outing.
“As per our sources, the Indian Commanders including Indian Army Chief, Northern Command Commander and Commander 15 Corps were present there. The Indians held onto the news till now. Even the admission of downed MI 17 helicopter came after elections are over. It’s interesting that they waited for their elections to be over. It means two things: 1. The Indian Armed Forces were working in connivance with Modi Govt, indicating deep penetration of Hindu Fundamentals into the armed forces. This indeed is a dangerous scenario, given the fact that India is a nuclear armed country. 2. On the military plane, Indian Armed forces still need to go a long way to enable their government to operationalize their foreign policy in the region”, the official added.
“Interestingly, you may have noticed that Indian Army Chief is not visible on media since 27 Feb,” he further added.
The other takeaway of the standoff (still unreported by major media) was the downing of an Indian Jet by PAF’s JF-17 Thunder when several of IAF jets crossed LoC into Pakistan territory, according to another source. It was Sino-Pakistani Thunder’s first battle test anywhere in the world. This was a huge takeaway for China –its JF-17 getting battle-tested outside its territory.
As for one of the details of the Pulwama standoff between the two nuclear rivals and neighbors, Russian media (SPUTNIK) outlet’s latest report says it all:
“The Indian Northern Army Commander Lt Gen. Ranbir Singh and 16 Corps Commander Lt Gen. Paramjit Singh had left for another post, 700 meters from the military compound where the PAF dropped precision-guided glide bombs in an air strike on 27 February in retaliation to the IAF’s strike a day earlier”.
The report says these two top Indian military commanders escaped the PAF bombing near an Indian defense installation in the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 27 February, citing a report in The Print media outlet some three months later.
The PAF dropped the H-4 Stand-Off Weapon (SOW), a precision-guided glide bomb, while retaliating to the 26 February ‘non-military’, as claimed by Indian Air force, airstrike in Balakot to destroy alleged terror infrastructure of the Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) group.
Abhinandan
The bomb fell inside the compound of the Indian Army’s brigade headquarters in Jammu and Kashmir’s Rajouri sector, says the report.
Following the retaliatory strike, Pakistan military spokesperson Major Gen. Asif Ghafoor claimed that the PAF set out to execute the attack in a way to “make sure that there was no collateral damage”.
“Because we are a responsible state and want peace, we decided that we will not use any military target,” Ghafoor emphasized on the day of the first ever aerial clashes between the two nuclear-armed neighbors.
Tensions between India and Pakistan heightened in mid-February, when a total of 40 Indian soldiers were killed by a local suicide bomber in occupied Kashmir state’s Pulwama district. The Indian government vowed to avenge the terror attack, accusing Islamabad of harboring terrorists. However, the Imran Khan-led Pakistan government has categorically denied such a claim on several occasions.
Meanwhile, since the February clashes, the first direct communication between Pakistan Prime Minister Khan and his counterpart Narendra Modi was established on Sunday (26 May) — three months after the Balakot strike, as PM Khan congratulated Modi on his re-election as Indian prime minister.
Khan had offered Modi direct talks for peace and the latter had turned it down. Khan said then he would wait after India polls to reach out to Modi for talks.
