Kamal Ghorui
(Source: @ IAF)
New Delhi: Did the Indian Air Force strike Kirana Hills during Operation Sindoor? The question, which had circulated in military and political circles during the operation last year, has returned after the air force put out a video on Republic Day showing the Pakistan’s nuclear base in Sargodha getting hit, accompanied by footage of Indian jets — Rafale, Sukhoi, Jaguar and Tejas — and the words “the enforcers of peace”.During a press briefing on the operation last year, Air Marshal A K Bharti, then Director General of Air Operations, had said India had not struck Kirana Hills. Asked about the latest video posted on its official X account, IAF maintained this stand. “We still stand by the official version,” an IAF official told TOI, without elaborating.
The IAF video also shows images of Nur Khan base and other Pakistani military assets being hit during Operation Sindoor, with a Swiss report recently saying the Indian strikes forced Pakistan into appealing for peace.With the background music of ‘Mahisasura Mardini’, IAF, in the R-Day video, displayed the Sindoor formation of fighter jets, saying, “I (fighter jet) stand as the unbreakable guarantor of peace. Should malevolent eyes dare and attempt to break this tranquillity, I rise as the fierce enforcer of peace. Infallible, Impervious, Precise.”There was a lot of speculation last year on whether India had struck Kirana Hills, as it is believed to be one of the storehouses of Pakistan’s nuclear warheads.Responding to a media query on May 12, 2025, amid the conflict, Air Marshal Bharti had then said with a smile, “We have not hit Kirana Hills, whatever is there. I did not brief in my briefing yesterday.”TOI had reported last year that fresh imagery from Google Earth, captured in June, appeared to indicate that a missile had indeed hit the strategically-sensitive nuclear site in Pakistan. The images had been analysed and shared by satellite imagery expert and geo-intelligence researcher Damien Symon on X.The video released on R-Day also showed rare images of IAF’s super advanced weaponry loaded on its advanced fighter jets. It showed the hardpoint of a Rafale armed with two Meteor missiles, silencing Pakistani and western critics who had said India did not get the beyond-visual-range missile from France along with the package of 36 Rafale jets, and therefore, did not use the missile in the Pakistan aerial strikes.The video also showed Indian-made air-to-air missile, Astra, loaded onto a Sukhoi fighter; a BrahMos cruise missile on another Sukhoi and short-range air-to-air missile ASRAAM loaded onto a Jaguar deep penetration strike aircraft. Hammer and a precision strike missile, Rampage, were also seen on another Rafale.The video seems to display the array of IAF’s advanced missile arsenal used to attack terror targets during the Balakot surgical strikes and Pakistan bases during last year’s Operation Sindoor.
