An Indian Harop loitering munition accidentally struck Pakistan’s Kirana Hills near Sargodha during Operation Sindoor after running critically low on fuel, former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan said on Tuesday.
Speaking at the Vivekananda Centre in New Delhi, Chauhan reportedly clarified that the incident was completely unintentional and that India did not deliberately target Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.
According to Chauhan, the Israeli-designed Harop was deployed in the Sargodha area to locate and destroy Pakistani military radar installations. However, the munition failed to identify its intended target and continued searching while consuming its available fuel.
The drone eventually ran critically low on fuel. With its flight endurance exhausted, it descended and struck the Kirana Hills area, located approximately 10 kilometres north of Sargodha.
The incident attracted attention because Kirana Hills has been linked to Pakistan’s nuclear programme, raising concerns over the potential impact on sensitive infrastructure. Indian officials, however, have maintained that the area was not intentionally targeted.
"There was a small episode about what Air Marshal Bharti was asked, the Kirana Hills episode. I think I'll clarify this.
On occasions, it's been asked whether Kirana Hills were hit; that is where their (Pakistan's) nuclear facilities are," Gen Chauhan (retd) said.
He said Air Marshal Bharti had then "rightly clarified that we did not target Kirana Hills". "I can, maybe give a kind of an explanation.Before those strikes, we had sent in a lot of loitering munitions to Sargodha, and Kirana Hills is about 10 km north of Sargodha.
So the loitering munition is looking for radars which are in and around Sargodha, and it has a time span, which means it will loiter for about two hours, and once it does not find a target, it comes down and hits somewhere," the former CDS said.
"It must have come and hit one of those hills. So that could be one of the reasons as to what people asked. Because Pakistani media also showed some images in which there was smoke coming out from Kirana Hills," he added.
Chauhan’s account is consistent with earlier remarks by Air Marshal A K Bharti, who served as the Indian Air Force’s Director General of Air Operations during the conflict. Bharti had also rejected claims that India deliberately targeted Pakistan’s nuclear facilities.
Chauhan’s remarks offer further clarification on the Kirana Hills incident, stressing that the strike was an unintended consequence of a failed radar-hunting mission rather than a deliberate attack on Pakistan’s nuclear infrastructure.
(With inputs from PTI)
