New Delhi:
India had planned to hit the Pakistan Air Force base in Skardu in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, but the mission had to be aborted last minute due to bad weather. This has been confirmed by the former Chief of Defence Staff, General Anil Chauhan.
The General confirmed that the Indian Air Force had been cleared to launch an attack on Skardu, a mission which was scrubbed because of bad weather.
Skardu Base, formally known as PAF Base Qadri, is a forward operating base of the Pakistan Air Force located near Skardu in Gilgit-Baltistan, PoK.
”The Chief had asked me whether he should strike Sargodha. I said, ‘Go ahead’ and I said, ‘Please identify two more targets.’ One of the targets he had identified was Skardu. We gave a yes but after sometime, the weather was bad in Skardu and they had to change over to Bholari,” said General Chauhan. who was speaking at the Vivekananda Centre in New Delhi.
The IAF’s assault on the Bholari hangar arguably became the most striking visual symbol of the May 10 air campaign. The attack was launched by the IAF’s Gandhinagar based South Western Air Command. Satellite imagery, first aired by NDTV, revealed a large, jagged breach torn through the roof of the structure, with a dark, caved-in space visible beneath. Wreckage was strewn across the apron connecting the hangar to the runway, indicating the blast had thrown debris outward. The damage appeared tightly contained to that one building, pointing to a precise strike.
In another stunning revelation, General Chauhan also confirmed a hit on Pakistan’s Kirana Hills, a nuclear hub of the Pakistani armed forces.
The General said that an Indian loiter ammunition (a drone) did indeed strike Pakistan’s Kirana Hills, during India’s Operation Sindoor last year, though the strike was not deliberate.
Ending the mystery over what happened at Kirana Hills, the former Chief of Defence Staff clarified that an Indian loiter munition (likely an Israeli-designed Harop drone) was searching for radars to strike but had run short on fuel in the vicinity of Kirana Hills.
”Bharti had rightly clarified that we did not target Kirana Hills,” said General Chauhan. ‘Bharti’ was Air Marshal AK Bharti (retired), the IAF’s Director General of Air Operations during Operation Sindoor.
”I can give an explanation,” said General Chauhan. ”Before those strikes, we had sent a lot of loiter ammunitions at Sargodha and Kirana Hills are 10 km North of Sargodha. So, the loiter ammunition was looking for radars which were in and around Sargodha and its got a life-time. It will loiter for about two hours and if it doesn’t find a target, it will come and hit somewhere. It must have come and hit one of those hills.”
