Pakistan Army on Friday left India red-faced by tweeting the pictures of all 4 missile seeker heads recovered intact from the wreckage of the site during a dogfight between air forces of the two countries on February 27. The Pakistan military released the pictures of 4 Indian missile seeker heads recovered intact from the wreckage after India refused to accept a report, which citing the US officials said that Pakistan's F-16 combat jets have all been accounted for.
"All 4 missile seeker heads recovered intact from the wreckage and held," tweeted DG ISPR Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor. He called upon the India to face the reality instead of distorting the facts, saying "Pakistan and its professional Armed Forces are staying humble by not drum beating".
He warned if India does not stop propaganda of shooting down of a Pakistani F-16, the military has more proofs and evidence to expose India and its air force.
"IAF claim of hitting F-16 by their Mig-21 before having been shot down by PAF gets exposed. We have more truth on this 'F-16 controversy' to share," he warned. Earlier in a series of tweets, the director general Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major Gen Asif Ghafoor said that it stands vindicated after a count of its F-16 fighter jets by the US. In a report, a foreign magazine quoted unnamed US defence officials as saying that their physical count found that all F-16 jets in the Pakistan Air Force (PAF) fleet are accounted for.
The confirmation by US defence officials is a huge embarrassment for India which claims that its air force had shot down a PAF F-16 jet in the February 27 air battle over Kashmir. Islamabad denies the claim. The director general Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR) Major Gen Asif Ghafoor said that Pakistan stands vindicated after the FP report. He also urged India to introspect over the human rights violations by its forces in the occupied valley.
"Allah be praised, truth always prevails. Time for India to speak truth about false claims and actual losses on their side including the second aircraft shot down by Pakistan. India needs introspection especially over atrocities in IoK. The region needs peace, progress & prosperity," he tweeted.
The US endorsement of Pakistan's version will add insult to injury as the earlier Indian claim of decimating the "largest terrorist training camp" in the Balakot area of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province has already fallen flat.
Pakistani warplanes shot down two Indian Air Force (IAF) jets - including a Russian-made MiG 21 - and arrested one of the pilots in the battle that took place a day after Indian aircraft brazenly violated Pakistan's airspace and dropped a payload on a densely forested mountain in Balakot.
At the time New Delhi boasted that the 'air strike' had targeted the "largest training camp of Jaish-e-Muhammad (JeM) militant group" causing "a large number of casualties." Pakistani and international media and experts have already debunked the Indian claim as neither was any infrastructure damaged nor was any casualty in the incident.
AFP ADDS: A US magazine cast serious doubt Friday on India's assertion that it shot down a Pakistani F-16 fighter jet during the two nuclear-armed countries' latest bust-up in February.
Citing two unnamed senior US defence officials, Foreign Policy said that US personnel recently conducted a count of Pakistan's F-16s and found none missing.
This contradicts a statement from India's Air Vice Marshal R G K Kapoor that India downed a Pakistani F-16 in a dogfight on February 27.
Pakistan denied at the time that this was the case. Foreign Policy quoted one of the officials as saying that Pakistan invited the US to physically count its F-16 fleet. Many agreements on the sale of US military hardware to third countries include clauses allowing US officials to regularly inspect the equipment.
Some of the aircraft were not immediately available, so it took US personnel several weeks to account for all of the jets, the official said.
But now the count has been completed, and "all aircraft were present and accounted for," the magazine quoted the official as saying. The Indian Air Force however said it had proof of shooting down the F16. "Radio communication of Pakistan Air Force ... confirms that one of the F-16s that attacked India on February 27 did not return to its base," local media quoted IAF sources as saying. There are no official figures from Pakistan on how many F-16s it has but reported estimates place the number between 70 and 80.
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