INDIA SAYS MANY MILITANTS ‘ELIMINATED’ IN AIR STRIKE
JeM militants were planning another attack, claims New Delhi
IMEDIA LAW EXPERT JASON BOSLAND, on Australian court gag orders NDIA said yesterday its warplanes attacked a militant camp where Pakistan-backed fighters were preparing suicide attacks on its cities, sending tensions between the arch-rivals to a new peak.
A “very large number” of militants from the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) group were killed in the nighttime attack, according to the Foreign Ministry, while Pakistan said its jet fighters scrambled to force the Indian jets back and that there were no casualties.
The escalation came after a Feb 14 suicide bombing claimed by JeM that killed 40 troops in Indian Kashmir, setting off a chain of threats and counter-warnings between the nuclear-armed neighbours.
“A very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen (suicide) action were eliminated,” Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said.
“Credible intelligence was received that JeM was attempting another suicide terror attack in various parts of the country,” he said, describing the threat as “imminent”.
Pakistan’s military spokesman Major-General Asif Ghafoor said the Indian Air Force had violated the Line of Control that divided Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir.
“Facing timely and effective response from Pakistan Air Force, (the Indian jets) released payload in haste while escaping near Balakot. No casualties or damage.”
The military spokesman also tweeted images of what he said was the Indian payload, showing what appeared to be pieces of metal and displaced soil in a heavily forested area.
India’s Foreign Ministry also said the camp was at Balakot, but gave no further details and the exact location of the camp remained unclear.
Balakot is in Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province, just a few kilometres from the Line of Control.
A strike in Pakistani territory outside of Kashmir would be a major escalation between the rivals, analysts said.
Beijing called on the nucleararmed neighbours to “exercise restraint”.
“We hope that both India and Pakistan can... adopt actions that will help stabilise the situation in the region and improve mutual relations, not the other way around,” China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said.
It was India’s first use of air strikes against Pakistan since 1971, when the two went to war.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart, Imran Khan, both summoned emergency meetings of top ministers in the hours after the attack.
New Delhi had threatened to retaliate after the Feb 14 bombing, the deadliest in three decades in Kashmir. Modi, who is expected to call an election in April, had threatened a “jawbreaking” response.
In Srinagar, five people were killed in a gun battle between JeM members and Indian security forces in disputed Kashmir as India intensified a security crackdown, including detaining more than 160 separatists this weekend.
Three members of JeM died in the shootout, as did a senior police officer and an Indian army soldier, according to the Indian military and police.
Three more soldiers were wounded in the battle in Turigam, a village in South Kashmir’s Kulgam district, defence and police officials said.
Two of the dead militants were from India, and one a foreigner, said a senior police officer who asked not to be identified.