An air strike and its aftermath - Balakot IAF strike

[timmy]

An air strike and its aftermath

By Simon Scarr, Chris Inton and Han Huang

UPDATED MARCH 6, 2019

Tensions have been elevated since Pakistan-supported militants in Indian-controlled Kashmir killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police in a suicide bombing on Feb. 14, but the risk of conflict rose dramatically on Feb. 26 when India launched an air strike on what it said was a militant base inside Pakistan.

Indian officials said the raid near the town of Balakot in northeast Pakistan destroyed a training camp of Jaish-e Mohammad, the militant group behind the deadly suicide attack on Feb. 14. India said “a very large number of JeM terrorists” had been killed. 

The villagers, however, said only one person was wounded and they knew of no fatalities. From what villagers could see, the air strike missed its target.

Pakistan-controlled

Kashmir

PAKISTAN

Balakot

Alleged target

A madrasa which India claims

was housing JeM militants

Shohal

Mazullah

Approximate

area where the

bombs landed

Bisian

Kunhar River

Jaba village

Residents claim no

knowledge of any casualties.

Satellite image: Google, DigitalGlobe, Landsat / Copernicus, CNES / Airbus

India’s Foreign Secretary, Vijay Gokhale, said the strike killed “a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated.” Fidayeen is a term used to describe Islamist militants on suicide missions.

Another senior government official told reporters that about 300 militants had been killed.

Pakistan disputed India’s death toll estimates, saying the operation was a failure that saw Indian jets bomb a hillside without hurting anyone.

On the wooded slopes above Jaba village near Balakot, residents pointed to four bomb craters and some splintered pine trees. But there were little other visible effects of the explosions that blasted them awake around 3 a.m.

“It shook everything,” said Abdur Rasheed, a van driver who lives in the area. He said there weren’t any human casualties: “No one died. Only some pine trees died, they were cut down. A crow also died.”

Pakistan army soldier walks near the crater where Indian military aircrafts released payload in Jaba village, Balakot, Pakistan. February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Asif Shahzad

Satellite images reviewed by Reuters show that the religious school appears to be still standing days after India said it had flattened the Islamist militant group's training camp in the area.

The images produced by Planet Labs Inc., a San Francisco-based private satellite operator, show the facility and its surroundings on March 4, six days after the air strike.

They add to questions about claims made by the Indian government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi that the raids had destroyed a JeM camp near Jaba village and the town of Balakot in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on Feb. 26.

The image is virtually unchanged from an April 2018 satellite photo of the facility. There are no discernible holes in the roofs of buildings, no signs of scorching, blown-out walls, displaced trees around the madrasa or other signs of an aerial attack.

Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who has 15 years’ experience in analysing satellite images of weapons sites and systems, confirmed that the high-resolution satellite picture showed the structures in question.

“The high-resolution images don’t show any evidence of bomb damage,” he said. Lewis viewed three other high-resolution Planet Labs pictures of the site taken within hours of the image provided to Reuters.

April 25, 2018

The Madrasa last year

March 4, 2019

Six days after the air strike

50m

50m

Where Reuters

took a picture

of the site

No major damage

evident to main

buildings

Madrasa

Access road

Blocked away

by Police

Satellite image: Google, DigitalGlobe

Satellite image: Planet Labs Inc.

The target

People in the area said Jaish-e Mohammad did have a presence, running not an active training camp but a madrassa, or religious school, less than a kilometre from where the bombs fell.

“It is Taleem ul Quran madrassa. The kids from the village study there. There is no training,” said Nooran Shah, another villager.

A sign which had been up earlier in the week identifying the madrassa’s affiliation to Jaish-e Mohammad had been removed by Thursday and soldiers prevented reporters from going into the compound.

But it was possible to see the structure from the back. It appeared intact, like the trees surrounding it, with no sign of any damage like that seen near the bomb craters.

Western diplomats in Islamabad also said they did not believe the Indian air force hit a militant camp.

“There was no militant training camp there. It hasn’t been there for a few years – they moved it. It’s common knowledge amongst our intelligence,” said one of them.

A building, which according to residents is a madrasa is seen near to the site where Indian military aircrafts released payload in Jaba village, Balakot, Pakistan. February 28, 2019. REUTERS/Asif Shahzad

India’s military used 12 Mirage 2000 fighter jets, an airborne early warning and control (AWAC) aircraft, a mid-air refueller and drones for surveillance in the attack, defence sources said. The Mirages were armed with Israeli developed air to surface Crystal Maze missiles and SPICE 2000 smart bombs, they said.

Mirage 2000

Fighter jets

EMB 145

AWAC

IL-78

Refuelling

IAI Heron UAV

Drone

The AWAC system is used to gather information from the airspace it surveys and facilitate communication between friendly aircraft. In some cases, it can use countermeasures that confuse enemy radar systems.

AWAC flight path

Indian airborne early warning and control (AWAC) aircraft on the morning of the air strike

Administered by

Pakistan

Aksai

Chin

Balakot

Air strike

Line of

control

Srinagar

Islamabad

Administered by India

CHINA

PAKISTAN

Flight path of

the AWAC

INDIA

Delhi

80 km

Indian air force veterans said the mission would have been planned meticulously to take advantage of the terrain and radar coverage patterns.

“For such an operation, decoy and surveillance missions are conducted to figure out when the radars are on and off. No equipment works around the clock, 24/7,” a former air force pilot said.

The jets may have flown low, hugging the terrain as much as possible to avoid being spotted by radar, which is less effective in mountainous regions.

“In general terms, for a radar located in the valley to look up, it will have severe restriction of view because of the mountains, however optimally you place them,” said a former Indian air force marshal.

Escalating tensions

The incident is the first Indian air strike on Pakistani territory since 1971. The strikes by Pakistan and India marked the first time that two nuclear-armed powers have clashed using airpower.

CHINA

Disputed

boundaries

Administered by

Pakistan

Line of control

Aksai Chin

Feb. 26

Indian air strike

KASHMIR

Srinagar

Administered by

India

Feb. 14

Suicide bomber kills 40

Islamabad

Feb. 27

Indian pilot ejects and lands here after being shot down

Feb. 27

Pakistani jet drops a bomb near an Indian army camp

PAKISTAN

INDIA

50 km

International travel disrupted

Pakistan closed its airspace following the strikes, with commercial flights in the country cancelled.

International airlines that normally transit between Indian and Pakistani airspace have been forced to reroute, including flights by Singapore Airlines, Finnair, British Airways, Aeroflot, and Air India, according to online portal flightradar24.com, which tracks the movement of planes globally.

Air traffic

Feb. 27 - 1300 GMT

Syria

Pakistan

India

Source: flightradar24.com

Some flights were mid-air as events were unfolding, forcing them to turn back, circle over India, or divert to new destinations.

Finnair

AY142 - Bangkok to Helsinki

Singapore Airlines

SQ308 - Singapore to London

Azur Air

ZF7747 - Moscow to Phu Quoc

Returns to

Russia

Previous

two flights

Previous

two flights

Detours to

avoid Kashmir

Kashmir

IRAN

Kashmir

CHINA

Kashmir

IRAN

CHINA

IRAN

CHINA

Turns back

Turns back

at border

Turns off course

PAKISTAN

Lands

PAKISTAN

Lands

PAKISTAN

INDIA

Dubai

Dubai

Turns

back again

Diverted

Diverted

INDIA

INDIA

Bangkok,

THAILAND

Phu Quoc,

VIETNAM

SINGAPORE

The truth behind the success of the Indian attack on Jaish-e Mohammad may become an issue in the Indian election. If the Pakistani version of events is correct and there were no or few casualties, then there will be major questions about whether the mission was a failure and whether the Modi government has deliberately misled the public. If indeed many militants were killed, it should help to garner support for Modi.

Sources: Google Earth; flightradar24.com; Maps4News; Reuters
Additional reporting: Asif Shahzad, Alasdair Pal, and Krishna Das | Additional editing: Gerry Doyle and Raju Gopalakrishnan

source : https://graphics.reuters.com/INDIA-KASHMIR/010090XM162/index.html

[timmy]

No access to Pakistan religious school that India says it bombed

 

Saad Sayeed

3 MIN READ

•  
•  

 

JABA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pakistani security officials on Thursday prevented a Reuters team from climbing a hill in northeastern Pakistan to the site of a madrasa and a group of surrounding buildings that was targeted by Indian warplanes last week.

 

 

A general view of a building, which according to residents was a madrasa (religious school) is seen near the site where Indian military aircrafts struck on February 26, according to Pakistani officials, in Jaba village, near Balakot, Pakistan, March 7, 2019. REUTERS/Akhtar Soomro

It is the third time in the past nine days that Reuters reporters have visited the area – and each time the path up to what villagers say was a religious school run at one time by militant group Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and what the Indian government says was a “terrorist” training camp - was blocked.

India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said on the day of the strike that it had killed “a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis” at the alleged training camp.

The Pakistani security officials guarding the way to the site cited “security concerns” for denying access. They stuck to the Pakistani government’s position ever since the Indian attack on Feb. 26 that no damage was caused to any buildings and there was no loss of life.

 

In Islamabad, the military’s press wing has twice called off visits to the site for weather and organizational reasons and an official said no visit would be possible for a few days more due to security issues.

The Reuters team could view the madrasa from 100 meters away and only from below. The building that reporters could see was surrounded by undamaged pine trees, and did not show any signs of damage or activity but given the view, the assessment is very limited.

High-resolution satellite images reviewed by Reuters on Wednesday showed the madrasa appears to be standing, virtually unchanged from an April 2018 satellite photo of the facility.

“That used to be the madrasa but it is no longer active,” said one villager, pointing at the white building on top of one of the many hills surrounding Jaba.

 

The site matched the coordinates of the satellite images.

Villagers told Reuters the school was no longer operational.

“It was shut down in June last year,” said one, who asked not to be identified.

On previous visits, a number of residents have said the madrasa was run by Jaish-e-Mohammed. A sign with the group’s name had previously stood near the site but was later removed.

Another man, Mohammad Naseem, said there were madrasas in the area, opened during the rule of General Zia-ul-Haq, whose Islamisation policies during his 1977-1988 rule are largely seen as bringing radicalization to Pakistan, but “there is no madrasa or anything like that here anymore”.

New activity at Pyongyang's long-range missile plant

“They say they killed 300 people but they didn’t even get 300 trees,” one soldier posted at the site of the Indian attack said.

“Thank God they didn’t destroy the four or five homes that are here.”

Reporting and writing by Saad Sayeed; Editing by Frances Kerry, Robert Birsel

Our Standards:The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-kashmir-pakistan-madrasa/religious-school-that-india-says-it-bombed-looks-undamaged-and-deserted-idUSKCN1QO27T

 

@Mitron @Kool_SRG

[Idassamed]

Enni doubts raa babu asalu mana deshaniki sainyam paina.

[kittaya]

4 hours ago, Idassamed said:

Enni doubts raa babu asalu mana deshaniki sainyam paina.

300 ane count aela vachindi Bhai... Doubt is not Abt the army.. but about the politician's... mf of India....

They manupulate the things... 

[Mitron]

@timmy what is the matter?

[Charanist]

24 minutes ago, Mitron said:

@timmy what is the matter?

no strikes anta le ra @Mitron  niku good news ey

[Idassamed]

25 minutes ago, Mitron said:

@timmy what is the matter?

Strikes levu antha uththuthi Ani telling .

[soodhilodaaram]

1 hour ago, kittaya said:

300 ane count aela vachindi Bhai... Doubt is not Abt the army.. but about the politician's... mf of India....

They manupulate the things... 

300 is based on NTRO's research, why doesnt BJP need to use this when congress has heavily used 1971 bangalesh war 

isn't the leader suppose to identify himself based on the his actions

IAF could have done the same thing after 26/11, why didn't congress give green signal and get the credit, reason is they are indecisive and never worked for nation except family

most of the news is pure diversion tactics, the most important aspect is change in indias policy, india crossed LOC first time after 1971, they will cross every time they want to from now on

[soodhilodaaram]

4 minutes ago, Idassamed said:

Strikes levu antha uththuthi Ani telling .

lenappudu why did Pakistan try to retaliate

[Idassamed]

Just now, soodhilodaaram said:

lenappudu why did Pakistan try to retaliate

Nenu anatem ledhu Kaka,, a article said that.

There was a strike but aa chanipoyina valla head count entho no clear details.

[soodhilodaaram]

Just now, Idassamed said:

Nenu anatem ledhu Kaka,, a article said that.

There was a strike but aa chanipoyina valla head count entho no clear details.

articles specially western ones and Indian media too are doing propaganda to avoid giving credit to Modi

Pak is now allowing anyone to check out the location

[Anta Assamey]

1 hour ago, kittaya said:

300 ane count aela vachindi Bhai... Doubt is not Abt the army.. but about the politician's... mf of India....

They manupulate the things... 

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said ... There were 300 active cell phones at that time ... Thats how they came up with that number .... He also questions were trees using Cell Phones... 

[Justice_Chowdary]

5 minutes ago, soodhilodaaram said:

articles specially western ones and Indian media too are doing propaganda to avoid giving credit to Modi

Pak is now allowing anyone to check out the location

nee bhajana appara babu. Army velli attack chesthe Modi gadiki credit endhi. Army should be credited.

nuvvu edho location ki elli choosinattu chebuthuanv attack jarigi 300 cahnipoyinattu. choodanappudu moosuku kuchora item.. India Govt ki dhammu ledha proofs choopinchataniki..

Pulwama attack chesindhi JEM gallu ani kooda proof choopinchalekapthunaru chetakani Blow job pundakors

 

This whole episode is to just get electoral votes.

[Prince_Fan]

2 minutes ago, Anta Assamey said:

Home Minister Rajnath Singh said ... There were 300 active cell phones at that time ... Thats how they came up with that number .... He also questions were trees using Cell Phones... 

[Chinna84]

1 hour ago, kittaya said:

300 ane count aela vachindi Bhai... Doubt is not Abt the army.. but about the politician's... mf of India....

They manupulate the things... 

it's the Media creativity - it's neither from the Army/nor BJP. 

later NTRO said that they were 300 active phones, so they are assuming that number now. but as a matter of facts, no body can tell you the exact count except Fakistan and look at them they were saying it's only trees got damaged !! just for the damage of trees, they came with F16 and tried to attack Indian Military bases - just ingitha gnanam vunte chaalu enthamandhi chanipoyaro ani ardham chesukotaniki ; unfortunately mana desham lo over democracy valla evadiki ishtamochinatlu vaadu matladuthuntaadu. Okademo kulam kosam, inkokadu Matham kosam, inkokadu power kosam !!