New Delhi : “The BBC could find little evidence that militants had been hit” in the Indian Army’s surgical strikes on September 29, says a BBC report, claiming mostly Pakistan Army posts on the Line of Control (LoC) had actually come under attack.
After touring the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to ascertain impact in the area, a Pakistan-based BBC correspondent said there is no conclusive evidence to prove either side’s claims – the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. He said the Indians definitely did not airdrop commandos to hit “launching pads of militants” nor conduct ground assaults deep into the PoK. “They did cross the Line of Control (LoC), in some cases by more than a kilometre, to hit nearby Pakistani border posts.”
The BBC correspondent said the militants continue to maintain safe houses in bigger cities like Muzaffarabad, located some distance from the border area. They mostly set up camps near military deployments along the LoC and away from villages where there is a growing sense of fatigue among locals towards the insurgency.
The report by M Ilyas Khan says there were no reports of any of the camps in the Samahni area of Bhimber or in the Poonch-Kotli area having been hit. They are mostly located behind ridges that serve as a natural barrier against direct Indian fire.
In Leepa, some five or six wooden structures housing militants between the villages of Channian and Mundakali had not been targeted. A ridge that runs along the east bank of the nearby stream covers them from military positions on the LoC.
Likewise, in Neelum, most militant camps – such as the ones at Jhambar, Dosut and in the Gurez valley area further east – are located in the valleys below, at a safe distance from the LoC.
The BBC also could not confirm India’s claim that Lashkar-e-Taiba camps in the Khairati Bagh village of Leepa valley and the western end of Dudhnial village in Neelum valley had been hit on September 29.
However, in Dudhnial some locals who helped carry military munitions to forward posts the weekend following the Indian strikes said they had seen one or two damaged structures close to a Pakistani post near the border.
But they were reluctant to discuss whether those structures had been occupied by militants, or whether five or six men had died there, as reported the Indian media.
