India’s “Operation Sindoor” inflicted “clear damage” to Pakistan’s military facilities and provided New Delhi an edge during the four-day military clashes between two nuclear-armed neighbours, the New York Times reported, citing satellite images.
The report said high-resolution satellite imagery, from before and after India’s strikes, showed “clear damage” to Pakistan’s facilities.
“The four-day military clash between India and Pakistan was the most expansive fighting in half a century between the two nuclear-armed countries. As both sides used drones and missiles to test each other’s air defences and hit military facilities, they claimed to inflict severe damage,” the NYT report noted.
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India had ‘clear edge’
It also said that while India’s attacks were “widespread”, the damage was far more contained than claimed, and appeared mostly inflicted by India on Pakistani facilities.
According to the NYT report, strikes by both India and Pakistan were “precisely targeted”.
“Where India appears to have had a clear edge is in its targeting of Pakistan’s military facilities and airfields, as the latter stretch of fighting shifted from symbolic strikes and shows of force to attacks on each other’s defence capabilities,” the report said.
Indian armed forces said that the strikes targeted an aircraft hangar at Bholari air base with a precise strike. The NYT report said, “The visuals showed clear damage to what looks like a hangar.”
India’s strikes on the Nur Khan air base, located at a short distance from both the Pakistani Army’s headquarters and the office of the country’s prime minister was “perhaps the most sensitive military target that India struck.” The military facility is also close to a Pakistani military division that control’s the country’s nuclear command, the report noted.
Satellite images also showed damage to runways and other facilities, which India claimed to have attacked. The NYT cited Pakistan’a May 10 notice about a non-operational runway at Rahim Yar Khan air base as another evidence of the damage from Indian strikes.
At Sargodha air base, in Punjab Province in Pakistan, the Indian military said it had used precision weapons to strike two sections of the runway.
Radar sites at Pasrur and Sialkot aviation base were also targeted using precision munitions, causing massive damage.
Pakistan’s claim not backed by evidence
“Satellite images of the sites Pakistan claimed to have hit are limited, and so far do not clearly show damage caused by Pakistani strikes even at bases where there was corroborating evidence of some military action,” the report noted.
Pakistan officials claimed to have “destroyed” India’s Udhampur air base but the report said “an image from May 12 does not appear to show damage.”