Pakistani soldiers killed in ‘selective targeting’, claims Indian media  

NEW DELHI: India’s senior officials have claimed that around five commandos of the Indian Army, possibly a special forces unit, crossed the Line of Control (LoC) in the Poonch sector of Indian-held Kashmir on Monday evening and reportedly killed four Pakistani soldiers. The strike follows the killing of four Indian soldiers, including a major by a Border Action Team of the Pakistan Army in Rajouri on Saturday, reported NDTV.

Indian officials have described it as a “localised tactical level operation” authorised at the level of a brigadier.

Media reports claimed that a group of Pakistani soldiers on patrol near a temporary post were targeted with an explosion. Some in the group of Pakistanis may have been killed in that blast, claimed Indian officials. The others were disoriented and taking advantage of that, a small unit of Indian Army battalion level commandos called Ghataks crossed about 300 metres across the LoC and shot the rest of the soldiers in the patrol, further claimed the Indian officials.

The Pakistani unit was 59 Baloch, headquartered at Rakhchakri. This battalion comes under the Rawalakot Brigade of the Pakistan Army, the reports claimed.

The Indian army did not use the words “surgical strike” to describe the 45-minute operation, which targeted a specific Pakistani post. The operation was “selective targeting”, said Indian officials, adding that it was meant to be very limited in scope and meant to achieve a very specific goal. No Indian soldier was injured in the operation, the report claimed.

On Monday evening, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) said that as many as three Pakistan Army personnel were martyred and one was injured due to heavy cross-border shelling by Indian forces, refuting Indian media claims that four soldiers were killed.

The Indian army violated the ceasefire violation hours after Pakistan allowed convicted Indian spy Kulbhushan Jadhav’s mother and wife to meet the spy in Islamabad, in what the Foreign Ministry said was a “humanitarian gesture”.

India has breached the ceasefire agreement on more than 1,300 occasions since the start of this year and at least 52 civilians have lost their lives, while 175 have been injured.