Satellite images of the Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorist training camp in Pakistan’s Balakot shows bomb impact points on a large structure in addition to significant damage on the ground at the site.
On February 26, the IAF strike the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s training camp at Balakot, using Mirage 2000 fighters armed with SPICE 2000 satellite-guided bombs.
According to the military aviation specialist Angad Singh, “big penetrators e.g SPICE 2000 spend most of their mass on the casing”. “There is no hard and fast rule that a 2000-lb class bomb will wipe out half a hillside,” he said.
Earlier on Wednesday, news agency Reuters, quoting satellite imagery experts, had disputed the claim of the Indian Air Force and the Government of India that they had successfully struck the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s Balakot camp.
Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies said that “The high-resolution images don’t show any evidence of bomb damage.”
However, a closer analysis of pre-blast and post-blast images indicate four likely bomb entry points on the roof of the largest structure at the camp. It also shows significant changes on the ground and possibly structures a short distance from the building mentioned above.
On Monday, the Chief of Air Staff BS Dhanoa said, “The target has been clearly amplified by the Foreign Secretary in his statement and if we planned to hit the target, we hit the target otherwise why would they (Pakistan) have responded? If we had dropped bombs in the jungle, there would have been no need to respond.”
However it was not up to the IAF to count casualties on the ground he added.
There has not been any evidence of how many terrorist have been killed in the strike but government sources has indicated off sources that around 300 terrorist have been killed in the strike.
