Islamabad: Speaking to media representatives, Director General Inter Services Public Relations (DG ISPR) of Pakistan has revealed that the Mian Channu incident took place yesterday, which was earlier thought as a drone or jet crash, was actually caused by a supersonic surface-to-surface missile that was launched from India.

“Whatever caused this incident to happen it’s for Indians to explain”, said DG ISPR while replying the question that if it was a sign of any hostile intent from Indian side. “It nevertheless shows the disregard for aviation safety, and reflects very poorly on their technological prowess, and procedural efficiency”, he added.

“The incident could have resulted in a major aviation disaster as well as civilian casualties on ground”, he said further.

Pakistan strongly protested this Indian projectile entry into Pakistan calling it “flagrant violation”. DG ISPR also cautioned about reoccurrence of any such incident in the future.

TECHNICAL DETAILS

PAF representative Air Voice Marshal (AVM) Tariq Zia shared the technical details about the missile.

During our routine surveillance on 9th March, at 1843 hours we picked up a high speed object close to Sirsa (a location in Indian Rajasthan). He said within Indian territory, the closet point to international border was 104 Kilometers.

He told media that the projectile (missile) was tracked at 40,000 ft altitude at speed of 2.5 Mach whcih eventually reached to Mach 3. Not only that, but he also explained with the help of above shown map that initially the missile was travelling at a south-western path, and before it appeared to initially go towards Mahajan field firing range, located south of Sirsa. ACM Tariq Zia told that missile changed its course rightwards (to wards Pakistan border) after traveling around 20 – 80 kilometers inside Indian territory.

“Pakistan Air Defense system had a continuous and solid tracking of this projectile. It crossed into Pakistani side from South of Bahawalpur and eventually faded out around 1850 hours (6:50 PM) PST close to Mian Channu.”, ACM explained.

During the 6 minutes and 46 seconds total flight of the missile, it travelled 124 kilometers inside Pakistan for which it flew for 3 minutes and 44 seconds inside Pakistani airspace. He further told that debris of the missile has been collected and forensic analysis of the same is undergoing. He said that so far we can deduce that it was a surface-to-surface supersonic missile. He said, more details will emerge in future along with exact type of the missile.

Later on DG ISPR answered the questions of media persons regarding the incidents where he reiterated that Indian response will clear the fog about the circumstances in which the said missile landed in Pakistan. He refrained from answering political questions.

He also cleared that the Indian missile was not shot down by PAF instead it crashed on its own.

DG ISPR said the detailed inquiry is still underway and Pakistan being a responsible nation will not be provoked hastily by such actions. He explained there was no DGMO level contact between two militaries on this incident and the matter will be pursued through foreign office.

According to military spokesperson of Pakistan armed forces, as soon as this missile took a turn towards Pakistani territory, all technical and tactical SOPs were implaced, and we were well aware of its point of impact, and soon after the impact, troops from nearby military garrison rushed at impact sight.

He told there was no casualty on ground, only a wall of a civilian compound was damaged due to impact.

Rise in Terrorism

On a question related to recent incident of terrorism in Sibi Baluchistan, DG ISPR said there was an uptake in such incident in recent times, but he also said that during last few weeks, almost 80 terrorists have been eliminated by security forces across the country. He also told that 4 terrorists were killed just today.

He said the reason behind these incident was the vacuum created by the US withdrawal from neighboring Afghanistan, due to which many terrorist organizations got opportunities to launch these attacks. Current Afghan government is going to take sometime before bring able to fully control such elements.

News Desk