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Indian air force downs drone near Pakistan border: police
AHMEDABAD, India, Feb 26, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – India’s air force shot down a drone near the frontier with Pakistan on Tuesday, officers said, just hours after New Delhi announced its warplanes had bombed a militant training camp over the border.
Villagers discovered debris from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) not far from the Pakistan border in western Gujarat state, police sources told AFP.
“A UAV has been shot down by the armed forces. We are investigating it,” a senior police officer said on condition of anonymity.
Investigators would probe whether the drone came from Pakistan, he added. The nuclear-armed rivals frequently claim to have shot down surveillance craft that strayed into each other’s territory.
The police officer said villagers in Kutch district — a remote desert region — heard a “loud noise” in the early hours of Tuesday.
He did not elaborate further about the downing of the done or its origins, citing “security concerns”.
The incident came after India said its fighter jets struck a militant camp inside Pakistan-controlled territory in a pre-dawn raid, drastically escalating tensions between the nuclear-armed rivals.
New Delhi said their warplanes destroyed a training base used by Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM).
The same group claimed responsibility for a suicide attack in Indian-administered Kashmir earlier in the month that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary troopers.
New Delhi said a “very large number” of JeM militants were killed in the strike on the camp, where it alleges fighters were planning further attacks on India. Pakistan rejected the claims, saying its fighters scrambled to force the Indian jets back, which dropped payloads as they escaped. It did not clarify what it meant by “payloads”.
BSS/AFP/PI/1840