NEW DELHI: India’s air force presented what it called “irrefutable evidence” Monday that it downed a Pakistan fighter jet in February, as the regional foes offer competing narratives over what happened in the dogfight.
Pakistan has repeatedly denied that it lost an F-16 over the skies in Kashmir while a US magazine, citing top defense officials, has also cast doubt on India’s assertion that a jet was shot down.
India lost an MiG-21 Bison in the aerial skirmish and its pilot was captured by Pakistan and later returned, cooling one of the most serious military confrontations between the nuclear-armed rivals in decades.
But India has long maintained that its pilot first fired on an F-16, sending the damaged jet crashing into Pakistan-administered Kashmir — something Islamabad says never happened.
In a press conference Air Vice Marshal R.G.K Kapoor repeated this assertion, reading out the evidence gathered by India and displaying radar images he said proved the Pakistan jet was struck and crashed.
“There is no doubt that two aircraft went down in the aerial engagement on 27 February 2019,” Kapoor said Monday, reading from a prepared statement.
India’s air force “has irrefutable evidence of not only the fact that F-16 was used” on the day of the dogfight, but that it was shot down by the Indian jet, he added.
Kapoor said further “credible information and evidence” backed this version of events but could not be released due to confidentiality concerns.
It comes just days after Foreign Policy magazine cited two unnamed senior US defense officials who said that US personnel recently conducted a count of Pakistan’s F-16s and found none missing.
The magazine quoted one of the officials as saying that Pakistan invited the US to physically count its F-16 fleet.
The dogfight happened after Pakistani aircraft entered Indian airspace a day after Indian aircraft carried out an airstrike on what it said was a “terrorist training camp” in Pakistan.
That in turn was in response to a suicide bombing on February 14 in Indian-administered Kashmir that killed 40 Indian troops and which was claimed by a militant group based in Pakistan.
Doubt has also been cast over the success of India’s airstrike, which Amit Shah, president of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has claimed killed 250.
Pakistan denied that there was any damage or casualties.
Independent reporting by multiple local and international outlets who visited the site also found no evidence of a major terrorist training camp — or of any infrastructure damage at all.
Pakistan said it shot down two Indian planes and lost none of its own, but India said that it lost only one aircraft.
Initially Pakistan said it had captured two Indian pilots but the military later clarified it had just one pilot in custody.
Radar images prove Pakistan F-16 shot down: Indian Air Force
Radar images prove Pakistan F-16 shot down: Indian Air Force
- Pakistan said it shot down two Indian planes and lost none of its own, but India said that it lost only one aircraft
Ethiopia’s prime minister accuses Eritrea of mass killings during Tigray war
- Landlocked Ethiopia says that Eritrea is arming rebel groups, while Eritrea says Ethiopia’s aspiration is to gain access to a seaport
- Ethiopia lost sovereign access to the Red Sea when Eritrea seceded in 1993 after decades of guerrilla warfare
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia’s government Tuesday for the first time acknowledged the involvement of troops from neighboring Eritrea in the war in the Tigray region that ended in 2022, accusing them of mass killings, amid reports of renewed fighting in the region.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, while addressing parliament Tuesday, accused Eritrean troops fighting alongside Ethiopian forces of mass killings in the war, during which more than 400,000 people are estimated to have died.
Eritrean and Ethiopian troops fought against regional forces in the northern Tigray region in a war that ended in 2022 with the signing of a peace agreement.
Eritrea’s Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel told The Associated Press that Ahmed’s comments were “cheap and despicable lies” and did not merit a response.
Both nations have been accusing each other of provoking a potential civil war, with landlocked Ethiopia saying that Eritrea is arming and funding rebel groups, while Eritrea says Ethiopia’s aspiration is to gain access to a seaport.
“The rift did not begin with the Red Sea issue, as many people think,” Ahmed told parliamentarians. “It started in the first round of the war in Tigray, when the Eritrean army followed us into Shire and began demolishing houses, massacred our youth in Axum, looted factories in Adwa, and uprooted our factories.”
“The Red Sea and Ethiopia cannot remain separated forever,” he added.
Ethiopia lost sovereign access to the Red Sea when Eritrea seceded in 1993 after decades of guerrilla warfare.
Gebremeskel said the prime minister has only recently changed his tune in his push for access to the Red Sea.
Ahmed “and his top military brass were profusely showering praises and State Medals on the Eritrea army and its senior officers. … But when he later developed the delusional malaise of ‘sovereignty access to the sea’ and an agenda of war against Eritrea, he began to sing to a different chorus,” he said.
Eritrea and Ethiopia initially made peace after Abiy came to power in 2018, with Abiy winning a Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts toward reconciliation.
In June, Eritrea accused Ethiopia of having a “long-brewing war agenda” aimed at seizing its Red Sea ports. Ethiopia recently said that Eritrea was “actively preparing to wage war against it.”
Analysts say an alliance between Eritrea and regional forces in the troubled Tigray region may be forming, as fighting has been reported in recent weeks. Flights by the national carrier to the region were canceled last week over the renewed clashes.
