Video of 2016 surgical strike shows Indian Army blowing up bunkers in PoK

The government has released a video of the Indian Army’s surgical strikes against terrorist launchpads in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in late September 2016. The video, which shows bunkers and military installations being blown up, appears to have images from cameras mounted on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Thermal Imaging (TI) from cameras used by the Army to monitor the operation.

The Indian Army carried out the strikes on the night of September 28-29, 2016, eleven days after militants from Pakistan attacked a military base in Jammu and Kashmir’s Uri and killed 18 soldiers. Lt General Ranbir Singh, who was then the Army’s Director General of Military Operations, had announced on September 29, 2016, that the surgical inflicted “significant casualties” on the Pakistani side.

The army’s build-up for the strikes began on September 24. Special forces squads with night-vision devices, Tavor 21 and AK-47 assault rifles, rocket-propelled grenades, shoulder-fired missiles, Heckler and Koch pistols, high explosive grenades and plastic explosives crossed the LoC on foot. The teams were 30-strong each and had specific targets, notes this Hindustan Times story.

D-day began with Special Forces squads slipping across the LoC towards designated targets. The plan was such that teams with distant targets left early on September 27 evening so that all strikes would be coordinated. The instructions were that all teams would engage the terrorists simultaneously so that none could rescue another. Using mortar and machine-gun fire from the Indian side to pin Pakistani troops down, the soldiers of the special forces crawled to their targets without meeting any resistance.

Sentries at the launchpads were neutralised by snipers before the troops went in and finished the job. Barring one soldier who stepped on a landmine, all teams returned to their bases by 9am on September 28.