India first informed Pakistan after launching surgical strike, claims Modi

NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi claims that India first informed Pakistan before launching surgical strikes along the Line of Control (LoC) in 2016. Pakistan had categorically denied that any such strikes ever took place.

In a latest statement about the two-year old incident, Indian PM Modi said: “Since 11 in the morning, we were trying to contact them [Pakistan] over the phone but wouldn’t take our call. I had instructed our officers to tell the Pakistani army that we did it. We did not hide it. At noon, they answered the call. We told them,” said PM Modi answering a question at a gathering.

Lieutenant-General Ranbir Singh, the Indian director-general of military operations, had said the “surgical strikes” were launched following “very specific and credible information that some terrorist units had positioned themselves to infiltrate”.

The statements of then Pakistan and India’s top military officials over alleged surgical strikes along the LoC on September 29, 2016.

Pakistan had rejected the claims as an “illusion” but acknowledged the loss of two of its soldiers in the exchange of fire that also wounded nine others on September 29, 2016. “The notion of surgical strike linked to alleged terrorists’ bases is an illusion being deliberately generated by India to create false effects,” the Pakistani military said in a statement.

Read: India to face strong response in case of any surgical strike: Pak Military

“This quest by Indian establishment to create media hype by rebranding cross border fire as surgical strike is fabrication of truth,” the ISPR had said.

The strikes were launched days after terrorists attacked an Army camp in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri, killing 19 soldiers.

PM Modi said that his country won’t tolerate those who ‘run an industry of exporting terror and kill innocent Indians’.

After the alleged strikes by India, Pakistan’s then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had “strongly condemned the unprovoked and naked aggression of Indian forces” and pledged that the military was capable of thwarting “any evil design to undermine the sovereignty of Pakistan”.