New Delhi/Singapore: High-resolution satellite images reviewed by Reuters show that a religious school run by Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) in north-eastern Pakistan appears to be still standing days after India claimed its warplanes had hit the Islamist group's training camp on the site and killed a large number of militants.
The images produced by Planet Labs Inc, a San Francisco-based private satellite operator, show at least six buildings on the madrassa site on March 4, six days after the airstrike.
Until now, no high-resolution satellite images were publicly available. But the images from Planet Labs, which show details as small as 72 cm (28 inches), offer a clearer look at the structures the Indian government said it attacked.
The image is virtually unchanged from an April 2018 satellite photo of the facility. There are no discernible holes in the roofs of buildings, no signs of scorching, blown-out walls, displaced trees around the madrassa or other signs of an aerial attack.
The images cast doubts on statements made over the last eight days by India that the raids on February 26 had hit all the intended targets at the madrassa site near Jaba village and the town of Balakot in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
India's foreign and defence ministries did not reply to emailed questions sent in the past few days seeking comment on what is shown in the satellite images and whether they undermine its official statements on the airstrikes.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, who has 15 years' experience in analysing satellite images of weapons sites and systems, confirmed that the high-resolution satellite picture showed the structures in question.
"The high-resolution images don't show any evidence of bomb damage," he said. Lewis viewed three other high-resolution Planet Labs pictures of the site taken within hours of the image provided to Reuters.
India has not publicly disclosed what weapons were used in the strike.
Government sources told Reuters last week that 12 Mirage 2000 jets carrying 1,000 kg (2,200 lbs) bombs carried out the attack. On Tuesday, a defence official said the aircraft used the 2,000-lb Israeli-made SPICE 2000 glide bomb in the strike.
A warhead of that size is meant to destroy hardened targets such as concrete shelters.
Lewis and Dave Schmerler, a senior research associate at the James Martin Centre for Nonproliferation studies who also analyses satellite images, said weapons that large would have caused obvious damage to the structures visible in the picture.
"If the strike had been successful, given the information we have about what kind of munitions were used, I would expect to see signs that the buildings had been damaged," Lewis added. "I just don't see that here."
Pakistan has disputed India's account, saying the operation was a failure that saw Indian jets, under pressure from Pakistani planes, drop their bombs on a largely empty hillside.
"There has been no damage to any infrastructure or human life as a result of Indian incursion," Major General Asif Ghafoor, the director general of the Pakistan military's press wing, said in a statement to Reuters.
"This has been vindicated by both domestic and international media after visiting the site."
In two visits to the Balakot area in Pakistan by Reuters reporters last Tuesday and Thursday, and extensive interviews with people in the surrounding area, there was no evidence found of a destroyed camp or of anyone being killed. Villagers said there had been a series of huge explosions but the bombs appeared to have landed among trees.
On the wooded slopes above Jaba, they pointed to four craters and some splintered pine trees, but noted little other impact from the blasts that jolted them awake about 3 am on February 26.
"It shook everything," said Abdur Rasheed, a van driver who works in the area.
He said there weren't any human casualties: "No one died. Only some pine trees died, they were cut down."
Mohammad Saddique from Jaba Basic Health Unit and Zia Ul Haq, senior medical officer at Tehsil Headquarters Hospital in Balakot said they had seen no casualties.
India's foreign secretary Vijay Gokhale said on the day of the strike that "a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammad terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated" in the attack.
Another senior government official told reporters on the same day that about 300 militants had been killed. On Sunday BJP president Amit Shah put the number killed at more than 250.
India has not produced evidence that a camp was destroyed or that any militants were killed in the raid.
Contradictory reports
On March 5, The Print had published a report saying that exclusive satellite images accessed by the website show four black spots on the corrugated galvanised iron sheet roofs of Jaish facilities.
The website said this indicates the possibility that IAF smart munitions may have pierced the roofs which have since been patched with fresh CGI sheets and repainted. But the damage to buildings and walls from the airstrikes may not have been as extensive as it has been made out by the Indian government, the report stated. The images also show tents that were seen before the strikes have gone missing. There were two large blocks of tented accommodation of 17m x 6m in size seen in a pre-strike image. These tents are not seen in the latest imagery of March 4, indicating they were either removed or destroyed by the IAF bombing, The Print report said.
A Times of India report on March 2 said that the Indian defence establishment had stated that it had synthetic aperture radar (SAR) pictures to buttress its contention of having effectively hit the Jaish-e-Mohammed’s terror training facility at Balakot. This came after a few independent satellite imagery experts raised doubts whether the Mirage-2000 fighters had actually managed to hit the terror facility on the ‘Jaba Top’ hillock.
The TOI report quoted a defence official: “The SAR films clearly show before and after pictures of the intended targets being hit. It's up to the government whether it wants to release them or not. Pakistan, of course, has also worked swiftly to repair the damage to the site.”
Officials refused to specify the platform used to capture the SAR pictures, the report said.
