Pathankot attack: Deployment of NSG "joint" decision, says Army official

CHANDI MANDIR (HARYANA): The army today dismissed criticism over deployment of NSG over army in a predominant manner in the counter-terror operation in the Pathankot air base, saying it was a "joint decision" and that the army was fully involved in it.

"There was NSG, Air force, Garud commandos. Application of NSG was a joint decision taken at an appropriate level which included service chiefs," said Lt Gen Kamal Jit Singh, GoC-in-C, army's Western Command, told a media briefing here.

There has been criticism of the decision to deploy the NSG personnel flown from Delhi on Saturday morning in the air force base in Pathankot when a larger number of army commandos were available in nearby garrison in the border city itself Army's special forces commandos were said to be better equipped to deal with the siege of the base.

Lt Gen Singh said said terrorists holed up in buildings in the air force station took "advantage" of it which took time in eliminating them.

He said they also wanted to avoid a hostage situation as a large number of families and foreign trainees were residing inside the base.

"The buildings in the air force base station are such that which are located close to family quarters. The final group of two terrorists were in a two-storeyed structure where in the first our own troops were there. They (the families) had to be evacuated first and we had to avoid hostage situation because of that it took time.

"I also want to tell you that within these barracks, which are MES constructions. They are covered with steel doors. It is like sitting inside a bunker inside a building and so terrorists took advantage of it. The final body was recovered from inside of this structure," said Lt Gen Kamal Jit Singh at the Western Command Headquarters here.

Throwing light on the use of fore to eliminate the terrorists, Lt Gen Singh said "excessive" firepower was not used because of the presence of families in the quarters and civilians pockets in the area.

"The basic concept is to safeguard the strategic assets. We also follow a principle of calibrated use of force. We have too much fore power which cannot be used in this operation because there were family quarters and civilian pockets outside the air force base. This is why we used that much fire power which was required in that condition.

"For that we had to take even risks. It took time....We had to localise them (terrorists) to a very small area and finally eliminated them. We were under instructions and it was our concept to avoid unnecessary casualties. We took calculated risk so as not to have unnecessary casualties," he said.

"There are strategic assets here and there can be hostage situations as there are 11,000 people live here and 3,000 families, and above all, foreign trainees and had there been any hostage situation, it is NSG body which is specially trained to rescue them," he said.

Lt General further said that it was the success of this operation that Air force was station operational. Had there been any damage to the airport, in that situation how could we have brought NSG here," he asked.