ISLAMABAD – Indian government takes big and embarsding u turn over IAFstrike in Balakot, Pakistan.
Indian foreign minister Sushma Swaraj admitted on Thursday that itsso-called air strike in the Balakot area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa did notcause any casualties – military or civilian.
“No Pakistani soldier or citizen died in the air strike carried out by theIndian Air Force (IAF) across the border in Balakot,” she said whileaddressing an election gathering in the city of Ahmedabad.
New Delhi claimed on February 26 that the IAF jets had carried out what itcalled ‘preemptive strike’ in Balakot against a camp of Jaish-e-Muhammad(JeM) – the group it alleges was behind the February 14 killing of its 40soldiers in the Pulwama area of Indian Occupied Kashmir (IOK).
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The same evening, Indian Foreign Secretary Vijay K Gokhale boasted at anews conference that the “biggest training camp of Jaish-e-Muhammad” wastargeted by the IAF in which “a very large number of JeM terrorists,trainers, senior commanders and groups of jihadis who were being trainedfor fidayeen action were eliminated.”
The jingoistic Indian media readily bought the claim and started parrotingthe official version, even though Pakistan quickly allowed local andforeign media access to the site where IAF jets had “jettisoned theirpayloads”.
