IndIa says Pulwama avenged

Fighter planes strike militant training camps deep inside Pakistan territory

India said its warplanes struck a militant training camp inside Pakistan on Tuesday, killing “a very large number” of fighters, raising risk of conflict between the nuclear armed neighbours.

The air strike near the town of Balakot, 50km from the frontier, was the deepest cross-border raid launched by India since the last of its three wars with Pakistan in 1971.

The Indian government, facing an election in the coming months, said the air strikes hit a training camp belonging to Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), the group that claimed the suicide car bomb attack that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police at Pulwama in Kashmir on February 14.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said “a very large number” of militants were killed in the strikes on a Jaish training camp near Balakot. “The existence of such training facilities, capable of training hundreds of jihadis, could not have functioned without the knowledge of the Pakistani authorities,” Gokhale said.

A senior Indian government source said that 300 militants had been killed in the strikes and that the warplanes had ventured as far as 80km inside Pakistan. But no evidence was provided to back up the claims of casualties.

The government said the action was ordered as India said it had intelligence that Jaish was planning more attacks.

Indian Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj said she had spoken to US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Indian diplomats met foreign ambassadors to assure them there were no further escalation planned. —

I want to assure you our country is in safe hands. I won’t let the country down Narendra Modi, Indian PM