The Indian Army’s attack at nine terror locations late Wednesday night in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir marked the most expansive and widespread retaliation by India in recent years, since the Balakot airstrikes in 2019 and the surgical strikes following the Uri attack in 2016.
While the exact nature of the attack or the weapon systems used is not known so far, they are believed to have been high-precision missile strikes.
Both the Balakot strike and the surgical strike were also retaliatory actions by India, but were localised in nature.
The nine sites
Of the nine terror sites India says it has struck in Pakistan and PoK, four are said to be Bahawalpur and Muridke in Pakistan Punjab and Muzaffarabad and Kotli in PoK. All these cities are home to terror camps.
Bahawalpur, which faces the Rajasthan frontier across the Thar desert, has been a stronghold of the Jaish-e-Mohammed, led by Maulana Masood Azhar, who was among three terrorists swapped by India in exchange for the passengers of Indian Airlines flight IC-814, which was hijacked to Kandahar in Afghanistan in December 1999. Bahawalpur is the city where Masood Azhar was born in 1968, and where Pakistan’s dictator Zia-ul-Haq died in a plane crash in 1988.
Muridke near Lahore is the home of the Hafiz Saeed-led terror outfit Lashkar-e-Taiba, which carried out the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks. Muridke houses the Markaz-e-Taiba, the base camp of the Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Kotli in PoK is directly across the Line of Control from Jammu. Poonch in J&K is to its north-east and Rajouri south-east.
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Muzaffarabad is the capital of PoK. To its east are the J&K districts of Baramulla and Kupwara. It is known to house a cluster of terror groups whose members are helped by the Pakistan Army to cross over to India.
The operation
The retaliatory attack by India was codenamed Operation Sindoor, ostensibly a reference to only men being singled out based on their faith before being killed in Pahalgam.
Before the strikes, India had taken a series of diplomatic steps against Pakistan.
On Tuesday evening, a Notice to Airmen (NOTAM) issued said the Indian Air Force is conducting large-scale military drills along the International Border with Pakistan. The IAF had called it a pre-planned routine training exercise, in which all fighter jets were scheduled to participate.
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“Our actions have been focused, measured, and non-escalatory in nature. No Pakistani military facilities have been targeted. India has demonstrated considerable restraint in the selection of targets and method of execution,” a statement by the defence ministry issued after the attack said.
“We are living up to the commitment that those responsible for this attack will be held accountable,” it added.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
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