Report lists US nuclear targets
NEW DELHI: India’s National Investigation Agency (NIA) said yesterday it had identified the owner of the car used in the bombing of a security convoy in the disputed region of Kashmir, which has exacerbated tensions with arch-foe Pakistan.
The attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed at least 40 paramilitary police on February 14, in the deadliest single assault on Indian forces in 30 years of insurgency in the Muslimmajority region.
The Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack. The NIA identified the owner of the car as Sajjad Bhat, a student at a religious school in the Shopain area of Kashmir, who is believed to have joined JeM.
India accuses Pakistan of harbouring JeM and has vowed a strong response to the attack. Pakistan has demanded that it provide proof to back its claim. RUSSIAN state television has listed US military facilities that Moscow would target in the event of a nuclear strike, and said that a hypersonic missile that Russia was developing would be able to hit them in less than five minutes.
The targets included the Pentagon and the presidential retreat in Camp David, Maryland.
The report, unusual even by the sometimes bellicose standards of Russian state TV, was broadcast on Sunday evening, days after President Vladimir Putin said Moscow was militarily ready for a “Cuban Missile”-style crisis if the US wanted one.
With tensions rising over Russian fears that the US might deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe as a Cold War-era arms-control treaty unravels, Putin has said Russia would be forced to respond by placing hypersonic nuclear missiles on submarines near US waters.
The US said it had no immediate plans to deploy such missiles in Europe and dismissed Putin’s warnings as disingenuous propaganda.
It does not currently have groundbased intermediate-range nuclear missiles that it could place in Europe.
However, its decision to quit the 1987 Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty over an alleged Russian violation, something Moscow denies, has freed it to start developing and deploying such missiles.
Putin has said Russia does not want a new arms race, but has also dialled up his military rhetoric.
Some analysts have seen his approach as a tactic to try to reengage the US in talks about the strategic balance between the two powers, something Moscow has long pushed for with mixed results.
In the Sunday evening broadcast, Dmitry Kiselyov, presenter of Russia’s main weekly TV news show Vesti Nedeli, showed a map of the US and identified several targets he said Moscow would want to hit in the event of a nuclear war.
The targets, which Kiselyov described as US presidential or military command centres, also included Fort Ritchie, a military training centre in Maryland closed in 1998; McClellan, a US Air Force base in California closed in 2001; and Jim Creek, a naval communications base in Washington state.
Kiselyov, who is close to the Kremlin, said the “Tsirkon” (“Zircon”) hypersonic missile that Russia was developing could hit the targets in less than five minutes if launched from Russian submarines.
Hypersonic flight is generally taken to mean travelling through the atmosphere at more than five times the speed of sound.
“For now, we’re not threatening anyone, but if such a deployment takes place, our response will be instant,” he said.
Kiselyov is one of the main conduits of state television’s strongly antiAmerican tone, once saying Moscow could turn the US into radioactive ash.
Asked to comment on Kiselyov’s report, the Kremlin yesterday said it did not interfere in state TV’s editorial policy. Trump and Kim held their first summit, staged satirical stunts and was briefly detained there.