Loitering munition may have hit Pakistan’s Kirana Hills during Op Sindoor: Ex-CDS Gen Anil Chauhan

Former CDS General Anil Chauhan said an Indian loitering munition may have struck Pakistan’s Kirana Hills during Operation Sindoor after failing to locate radars near Sargodha and running out of fuel. He stressed Kirana Hills was not deliberately targeted and revealed Skardu strike plans

New Delhi: Former Chief of Defence Staff (CDS), General Anil Chauhan, has said that an Indian loitering munition may have struck Pakistan’s Kirana Hills, a location considered a nuclear hub of the Pakistani Armed Forces, during Operation Sindoor last year, while clarifying that the area was not deliberately targeted by the Indian military.

Speaking at the ‘VIMARSH’ event on Operation Sindoor and its aftermath at the Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi on Tuesday, General Chauhan shed light on the reports surrounding the Kirana Hills and explained how an Indian loitering munition could have ended up striking the area.

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According to General Chauhan, an Indian loitering munition, believed to be an Israeli-designed Harop drone, had been deployed to search for and target radars in and around Sargodha. However, after failing to locate a target and running out of fuel while operating near Kirana Hills, the munition may have ultimately crashed or struck one of the hills in the area.

“Bharti (referring to retired Air Marshal A.K. Bharti, who served as the Indian Air Force’s Director General of Air Operations during Operation Sindoor) had rightly clarified that we did not target Kirana Hills,” General Chauhan said.

In May last year, while addressing the media during Operation Sindoor, former Director General of Air Operations Air Marshal AK Bharti had said that the armed forces did not target the nuclear facility at Kirana Hills in Pakistan.

“Thank you for telling us that Kirana Hills houses some nuclear installation. We did not know about it. And we have not hit Kirana Hills, whatever is there,” he had said.

Elaborating on the sequence of events, General Chauhan said that Indian forces had sent several loitering munitions towards Sargodha and Kirana Hills before the strikes. Kirana Hills is located around 10 kilometres north of Sargodha.

“Before those strikes, we had sent a lot of loiter ammunition at Sargodha and Kirana Hills, which is 10 km north of Sargodha. So the loiter ammunition was looking for radars which were in and around Sargodha, and it’s got a lifetime,” he said.

Explaining the operating mechanism of the weapon, General Chauhan added, “It will loiter for about two hours, and if it doesn’t find a target, it will come and hit somewhere. It must have come and hit one of those hills.”

His remarks provide a possible explanation for what happened at Kirana Hills while reiterating that the location itself was not selected as a deliberate target during Operation Sindoor.

General Chauhan also revealed that the Indian Air Force had received clearance to strike Skardu in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) during the military operation. However, the planned strike was ultimately called off because of adverse weather conditions in the area.

“The Chief had asked me whether he should strike Sargodha. I said, ‘Go ahead’ and added, ‘Please identify two more targets.’ One of the targets he had identified was Skardu. We gave a ‘yes’, but after some time, the weather was bad in Skardu, and they had to change over to Bholari,” General Chauhan said.

The former CDS explained that the decision to shift the target was taken after weather conditions made the planned operation against Skardu difficult. The IAF subsequently redirected the mission towards Bholari.

The IAF’s strike on the Bholari hangar subsequently emerged as one of the most prominent visual symbols of the air campaign conducted on May 10 during Operation Sindoor. The operation was carried out by the IAF’s Gandhinagar-based South Western Air Command.