Indian Air Force chief BS Dhanoa on Monday, March 4, declined to comment on the death toll in the airstrike on a Jaish-e-Mohammed camp in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, saying it was for the government to provide details on the number of terrorists killed and the Air Force only sees if a target has been hit or not.
While leaders of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party continue to spit casualty numbers from the Balakot airstrike at every opportunity — without anything to support such claims — the organisation that carried out the attack chooses to not comment on casualties at all.
Addressing a press conference in Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore, he said that the Air Force is not in a position to clarify how many people were inside. “We don’t count human casualties. We count what targets we have hit or not hit,” he said.
The bomb damage assessment that is done post a mission only calculates the target that has been hit or not hit, the air chief noted. “We can’t count how many people have died. That depends on how many people were there,” Dhanoa said, adding that the government will make a statement on the number of terrorists killed.
Dhanoa’s statement comes in the wake of BJP president Amit Shah’s March 3 claim that over 250 terrorists were killed in the airstrike. Addressing the “Lakshya JITO” program in Ahmedabad, Shah said, “At that time Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government did an airstrike on the 13th day and killed more than 250 terrorists without any harm on our side.”
Dhanoa, in the press conference, also spoke about Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman, who was captured by Pakistan on February 27 and released on March 1. “We don’t take chances with the medical fitness of a pilot,” he said, adding, “That is why post-ejection, he has undergone a medical check. Thereafter, whatever treatment is required, we have given to him. Once he gets his medical fitness, then only he will get into a fighter cockpit.”
(With PTI inputs)