{"id":4680,"date":"2019-03-04T13:49:07","date_gmt":"2019-03-04T08:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.22.110.190\/english\/?p=4680"},"modified":"2021-01-05T03:12:39","modified_gmt":"2021-01-04T21:42:39","slug":"air-chief-marshal-bs-dhanoa-says-cant-count-casualties-in-balakot-strike","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/air-chief-marshal-bs-dhanoa-says-cant-count-casualties-in-balakot-strike\/","title":{"rendered":"Air Chief Marshal BS Dhanoa says &#8220;can\u2019t count casualties&#8221; in Balakot strike"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Air Chief Marsal BS Dhanoa said today that the Indian Air Force (IAF) \u201ccannot count how many people died\u201d in the strike at Pakistan\u2019s Balakot.<\/p>\n<p>Significantly, this comes a day after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) national president Amit Shah <a href=\"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/amit-shah-says-over-250-killed-in-balakot\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #008080;\">mentioned the figure at 250<\/span><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt depends on how many people were there. The Air Force is not in a position to count casualties,\u201d the Air Chief Marshal said today adding that the IAF cannot count the number of people who died due to the air strike carried out by India. He added that it was for the government to mention the figure. He was responding to a question on various reports in international media quoting Pakistani local people, suggesting that there were no casualties.<\/p>\n<p>On February 26, foreign secretary <a href=\"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/very-large-number-of-terrorists-killed-in-non-military-pre-emptive-strike-says-india-government\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><span style=\"color: #008080;\">Vijay Gokhale had said<\/span> <\/a>that a \u201cvery large number of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists\u201d had been killed in a \u201cnon-military, pre-emptive strike\u201d at a pre-dawn strike across the Line Of Control. that it was specifically targeted at the Jaish-e-Mohammed camp. He also clarified that the strike had been planned in a way that would \u201cavoid civilian casualties\u201d. He said there was information that the JeM was planning another suicide attack. However, no number has been mentioned officially by the government so far.<\/p>\n<p>The Air Chief Marsal today further added that the AIF was concerned about whether the target had been hit, and \u201cwe hit the target\u201d, he said. \u201cOtherwise, why would they [Pakistan] have responded? If we had dropped bombs in the jungle there would be no need to respond,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>He also refused to comment on \u201congoing operations\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>BJP chief Amit Shah has said 250 were killed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":279,"featured_media":4681,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-4680","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/279"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4680"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=4680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}