Terrorists involved in IC814 hijack, Pulwama attack killed during Operation Sindoor: DGMO Lt General Rajiv Ghai

The Indian military has confirmed that more than 100 terrorists were killed in nine terror targets in an early May 7 operation. During a press briefing on Operation Sindoor on Sunday evening, DGMO Lieutenant General Rajiv Ghai said that 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 line of control was also violated soon after by Pakistan, and the erratic and rattled response of our enemy was apparent from the number of civilians, inhabited villages and religious sites such as Gurudwaras that were unfortunately hit by them, leading to a sad loss of lives. 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. The Indian Air Force had their assets up in the sky...," he said.

He added 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.

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.

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Ghai also informed that the Indian Air Force and the Indian Navy played a "major part" in these strikes. "The line of control was also violated soon after by Pakistan, and the erratic and rattled response of our enemy was apparent from the number of civilians, inhabited villages and religious sites such as Gurudwaras that were unfortunately hit by them, leading to a sad loss of lives. 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. The Indian Air Force had their assets up in the sky," he added.

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.

DGMO Ghai said that after the Indian strikes, some terror hubs were now "bereft of" terrorists or had been vacated, fearing "retribution from us." "It 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. The locations that emerged were numerous, but as we deliberated more, we realised that some of these terror hubs were now bereft of presence and had pre-emptively been vacated, fearing retribution from us, Ghai said.

(With inputs from ANI)