Director General of Military Operations, DGMO of the Indian Army, Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai, today said strikes across nine terror hubs in Pakistan and PoJK under Operation Sindoor killed over 100 terrorists. Briefing media in New Delhi this evening, the DGMO said they include 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. He stated that Operation Sindoor was conceptualised with a clear military aim to punish the perpetrators and planners of terror and to destroy their terror infrastructure. Operation Sindoor set into motion a very diligent and microscopic scarring of the terror landscape across the borders and the identification of terror camps and training sites.
Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai said there was a self-imposed restriction to target only terrorists and prevent collateral damage. He added that the LoC was violated soon after the airstrikes, and the erratic and rattled response of the enemy was apparent from the number of civilians, inhabited villages and religious sites that were hit by them, leading to loss of lives. DGMO highlighted that the Indian Air Force played a major part in these strikes by engaging some of these camps, and the Indian Navy provided wherewithal in terms of precision munitions.
Director General of Air Operations, Air Marshal AK Bharti, informed that the targets were carefully selected and the target systems that were given to the Indian Air Force were the notorious training camps at Bahawalpur and Muridke. He said that through critical target system analysis, Air Force analysed all that needed to be done to annihilate the targets. He added that they planned to engage these targets with precision air-to-surface guided munitions in order to avoid collateral damage.
