IAF hits main Jaish camp deep across LoC in Balakot, 200-300 killed: Sources

The IAF used Mirage-2000 jets with laser-guided 1,000 pound bombs causing an estimated casualty of 200-300, the sources said.

Updated on: Apr 19, 2020, 14:01:30 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Shishir Gupta

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Indian Air Force fighter planes dropped laser-guided bombs at a Jaish-e-Mohammed terror camp well across the Line of Control in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa’s Balakote early on Tuesday morning, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said on Tuesday.

The strike comes almost two weeks after a terror attack killed 40 CRPF troopers in Pulwama in south Kashmir that raised tensions between India and Pakistan. (PTI File Photo/Representative image)

The IAF used Mirage-2000 jets with laser-guided 1,000 pound bombs causing an estimated casualty of 200-300, the sources said. The laser guided bombs are built with Israeli technology and were first used in Kargil. The air strike happened around 3.30 am.

Foreign Secretary Vijay Keshav Gokhale described the strike as “a non-military pre-emptive action”.

Watch: ‘Air Force bombed JeM’s biggest camp in Pakistan’: Foreign Secretary

Union Minister Prakash Javdekar said the action, which comes almost two weeks after a terror attack killed 40 CRPF jawans in Jammu and Kashmir, was a “necessary step”. (Live updates)

“Our army has demonstrated extreme bravery”, said Union Minister Prakash Javdekar in the first comment by a senior government functionary on the cross-border strike.

“The entire country is standing with the armed forces, he said, around the same time Prime Minister Narendra Modi met senior ministers and advisors for a review at a top security meet.

Congress president Rahul Gandhi has welcomed the cross border action. In a tweet, he said “I salute the IAF pilots”.

According to top government sources, the Balakote camp is spread around 6 to 7 acres and is the biggest Jaish e Mohammed camp in Pakistan.

A top intelligence source confirmed the strike at one of the biggest Jaish e Mohammed camp in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. According to analysts, the strike confirmed that India will deploy full spectrum deterrence if hit by a terror strike by Pakistan based terrorist group.

“The Modi government made it clear from Uri 2016 that every terror strike will be met with a retaliation,” said a top diplomat. “The question in the past was should we or should we not. Now it is when where and how”.

The attack that killed 40 CRPF troopers in Pulwama in south Kashmir had raised tensions between India and Pakistan. The suicide bombing had led to calls for punitive strikes against Pakistan for harbouring terrorists.

Pakistan’s Director General of Inter Services Public Relations Pakistan, Asif Ghafoor, tweeted, “Indian aircrafts intruded from Muzafarabad sector. Facing timely and effective response from Pakistan Air Force released payload in haste while escaping which fell near Balakot. No casualties or damage.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Shishir Gupta
Shishir Gupta is Executive Editor at Hindustan Times and one of India's top journalists covering national security, strategic affairs, foreign policy and geopolitics. Over the past three decades, he has extensively reported on India's military, diplomatic and security landscape, covering every major conflict and national security challenge, from the 1999 Kargil War and the 2020 East Ladakh standoff to Operation Sindoor in 2025. He has also covered major terror attacks, including the IC-814 hijacking, the 26/11 Mumbai attacks and the 2025 Pahalgam terror strike, along with numerous Pakistan-backed terrorist incidents in the Kashmir Valley and across India. He has reported on national and state elections for more than three decades. A recognised authority on strategic affairs, Gupta has covered India's nuclear programme since the Pokhran-II (Shakti series) tests in May 1998 and has written extensively on global nuclear issues, Indian diplomacy and the country's expanding global outreach. He has also reported widely on international conflicts and terrorism, with a special focus on the Indian subcontinent. Gupta has interviewed Prime Minister Narendra Modi more than four times, including Modi's first interview with the print media after becoming Prime Minister in May 2014. His other interviews include three with the Dalai Lama, as well as conversations with Benjamin Netanyahu, Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, S. Jaishankar, Nirmala Sitharaman and Piyush Goyal. He is the author of Indian Mujahideen: The Enemy Within (Hachette, 2011) and Himalayan Face-off: Chinese Assertion and Indian Riposte (Hachette, 2014). He was awarded the Chevening-Wolfson Joint Scholarship at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, UK, in 1998 and participated in the International Visitor Leadership Program (IVLP) of the US State Department in 2006. He received the Ben Gurion Prize from Israel in 2011 and the K. Subrahmanyam Prize for Strategic Studies in 2015 from the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA). Since 2024, he has hosted Point Blank, Hindustan Times' weekly YouTube show on global geopolitics.Read More

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