Indian forces carried out a strike at the biggest camp of the terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed in Balakote early this morning, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said on Tuesday, hours after IAF dropped 1,000 pound bombs in a thickly-forested hilltop that has eliminated a large number of terrorists.
The strikes was carried out on the basis of credible intelligence and designed to target the Jaish camp without any civilian casualties, Gokhale announced hours after Prime Minister Narendra Modi held a top security meet to review the cross-border strike.
The strike on terror camp comes 12 days after the Pulwama terror attack which killed 40 CRPF jawans dead after a Jaish terrorist rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a CRPF convoy on Jammu-Srinagar highway on February 14.
Gokhale’s briefing was the first formal statement from the government on the overnight strike by IAF’s Mirage-2000 jets. Sources told HT earlier that the laser-guided 1,000 pound bombs caused an estimated casualty of 200-300.
The Foreign Secretary did not get into the details of the strike, except to underline that the number of terrorists eliminated in the attack was “large”. “Strikes happened only a short while ago. We are waiting for more details,” he said.
