The head of the Indian Armed Forces, General Anil Zhhan, admitted for the first time that India was losing combat aircraft during the short military confrontation with Pakistan, which erupted in early May, but he refrained from determining its number or type, stressing that “the important thing is not to shoot down the plane, but rather the reason for its shooting down.”
This came in an interview conducted by Zhhan with Bloomberg channel, today, Saturday, on the sidelines of the “Shangri -La Dialogue” forum in Singapore, where he acknowledged the existence of “tactical errors” in the leadership of some aircraft during the fighting, stressing that the Indian army managed to correct these errors and implement the tasks later successfully.
While India denied the health of Pakistan’s allegations regarding its shooting down 6 Indian aircraft – including 3 French “Rafale” fighters – Chauhan appeared to be acknowledged at least one loss, in the first official statement from an Indian military official on this issue.
“The number is not important, what matters to us is the reason for the fall and what we have done after that. We have corrected, and the next day our planes took off and carried out their duties effectively.”
The military confrontation between the two countries erupted on May 7 after the bombing of an Indian targeting the lands of Pakistan and the Azad Kashmir region, in response to an attack in the town of Pahmam.
The confrontations lasted for 4 days, in which rockets and drones were used and artillery, before Islamabad and New Delhi reached a ceasefire agreement on May 10, by American mediation.
The clashes resulted in the killing of at least 70 people from both sides, and the displacement of thousands of civilians.
Pakistani security sources had previously confirmed that Chinese -made aircraft belonging to the Pakistani Air Force shot down 6 Indian fighters during the escalation, which New Delhi has not been officially confirmed so far, despite the emergence of evidence on the ground indicating the fall of planes inside Indian lands.
For his part, the Indian air Marshal said a. your. Bahariti in previous statements after the ceasefire that “all the pilots have returned safely,” adding: “We are in a fight, and the losses are part of the war.”
This confrontation is one of the most dangerous military escalations between the two nuclear powers for years, but it remained without the slope of a nuclear confrontation, according to the assurances of Qohan.
