'Our job is to hit targets, not count body bags', says Air Marshal Bharti on Pakistan Army casualties in Operation Sindoor

Air Marshal AK Bharti addressed the media on Sunday regarding the precision strikes carried out by the Indian armed forces as part of Operation Sindoor. The operation, which commenced on May 7 to strike multiple terror sites in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied-Kashmir following a deadly attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam where 26 tourists lost their lives.

Air Marshal Bharti confirmed that the strikes had the “desired effects on the enemy targets” but did not elaborate on the number of casualties sustained by the Pakistan Army. When asked about the loss of life, he emphasised that the objective was not to inflict casualties. “Our job is to hit the target, not to count the body bags,” he said, adding, “In case there have been casualties, it is for them to count.”

Refraining from disclosing technical details of the weapons and calibres used in the operation, Bharti cited operational confidentiality. “I never mentioned any of the weapons and calibre that we used—we leave it at that. Those are matters of operational details that I would not like to get into,” he said.

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The Air Marshal reiterated that the chosen methods had achieved the intended outcomes, underscoring that the primary goal was to strike the targets effectively. “How many casualties? How many injuries? Our aim was not to inflict casualties, but in case there have been, it is for them to count,” he added.

Meanwhile, Director General Military Operations (DGMO) Lieutenant General Rajeev Ghai said that more than 100 terrorists, including those involved in the 1999 Indian Airlines flight (IC-814) hijacking, and the 2019 Pulwama terror attack, were eliminated in the precision strikes carried out by the armed forces in Pakistan and Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK) under Operation Sindoor.

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He said that Operation Sindoor was conceptualised with a precise military aim to “punish the perpetrators and planners of the Pahalgam terror attack.” “Operation Sindoor was conceptualised with a clear military aim to punish the perpetrators and planners of terror and to destroy their terror infrastructure. What I do not state here is the often stated determination of India and its intolerance to terror,” Ghai said in a press conference here.

The Indian strikes killed “high-value targets”, namely, Yusuf Azhar, Abdul Malik Rauf and Mudasir Ahmed, who were involved in the hijacking of IC 814, popularly known as the Kandahar hijack, and the Pulwama attack, where 40 CRPF jawans were killed in 2019.

“Those strikes across those nine terror hubs left more than 100 terrorists killed, including high-value targets such as Yusuf Azhar, Abdul Malik Rauf and Mudasir Ahmed, who were involved in the hijack of IC814 and the Pulwama blast,” the DGMO added.

Ghai also informed that the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy played a “major part” in these strikes. DGMO Ghai said that the brutal Pahalgam terror attack and the “numerous other” such attacks on armed forces and defenceless civilians prompted India to make a “compelling statement of our resolve as a nation” against terrorism.

“You are all by now familiar with the brutality and the dastardly manner in which 26 innocent lives were prematurely terminated at Pahalgam on April 22. When you combine those horrific scenes and the pain of the families that the nation witnessed with numerous other recent terrorist strikes on our armed forces and defenceless civilians, we knew that the time had arrived to make yet another compelling statement of our resolve as a nation,” he said.

With inputs from agencies