Dhanoa said the bomb damage assessment was a different aspect and it was difficult for the IAF to confirm casualties.
NEW DELHI: Amidst a raging controversy over the damage inflicted on the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) terror camp in Balakot, IAF chief B. S. Dhanoa on Monday said his force does not count human casualties but the airstrike had hit the “target”.
“The Indian Air Force is not in a position to clarify the number of casualties. The government will clarify that. We don’t count human casualties. We do not count how many people were dead. We count what targets we have hit or not. We hit our target. The air force doesn’t calculate casualty numbers. The government does that,” he told the media here.
“The target has been clearly amplified by the Foreign Secretary in a statement. If we plan to hit the target, we hit the target. Otherwise why would he (Pakistan Prime Minister) have responded. If we dropped bombs in the jungles why would he respond,” Dhanoa said in his first public remarks on the February 26 air force operation as a consequence of the February 14 Pulwama attack in which 40 CRPF personnel were killed.
There has been a controversy over the number of people killed in the attack on the JeM camp in Balakot. While officially no figures have been given, BJP President Amit Shah claimed in Ahmedabad on Sunday that “more than 250” terrorists were killed in that airstrike.
