India Shot Down Six Pakistani Military Aircraft in May Conflict, Says Air Force Chief

India has intercepted and destroyed five Pakistani fighter jets and another military plane during combat in May, the chief of India air force said, the first time the country has declared such assertions since the deadly conflict with its neighbour.

Amar Preet Singh, the chief of India air force, announced Saturday, weeks after the Indian military admitted that an unspecified number of its own jets had also been disabled by Pakistan in the heaviest fighting between the nations in decades. It was with fighter planes and cruise missiles and claimed the lives of dozens of people.

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The war was instigated when armed men murdered 26 tourists in India-administered Kashmir town of Pahalgam on April 22.

Speaking at a military lecture in the southern city of Bengaluru on Saturday, Singh said the Pakistani jets were mostly shot down by India S-400 air defence systems.

“We have at least five fighters confirmed killed and one large aircraft,” he said, this is to add that the huge aircraft which could have been a surveillance plane was downed at 300km (186 miles).

“This is actually the largest ever recorded surface-to-air kill that we can talk about. Our air defence systems have done a wonderful job,” he was quoted as saying by several Indian media outlets.

Air Chief Marshal Staff Singh did not specify the model of fighter jets which were put to the ground but he claimed that air strikes also took place in a separate surveillance plane and “a couple of F-16 fighter aircrafts parked in hangars at two airbases in the southeast of Pakistan.

He said half of the F-16 hangar at Shahbaz Jacobabad airbase in the province of Sindh was destroyed.

Islamabad which uses Chinese produced jets and US F-16 to fly its air force has rejected the claim by India that it shot down any Pakistani jet in the May 7-10 conflict between the nuclear armed neighbours.

Pakistan did not respond to the statements of Singh immediately.

Pakistan claimed to have shot down six Indian military planes, including at least three Rafale fighters, during the course of their conflict, something one Indian military official called out as “absolutely incorrect”.

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Kashmir is claimed by both India and Pakistan in its entirety but each of them controls only a portion of the Muslim majority Himalayan state that has remained a source of tension between them ever since.

Since 1989, armed groups in the Indian-controlled areas of Kashmir are fighting against New Delhi control.

India blames Pakistan of sponsoring certain armed movements, although the latter argues that it only offers them political encouragement in their self-determination struggle with India about the Kashmir region.

Ever since India and Pakistan called a ceasefire in May, fighting has intermittently been going on in the region between Indian troops and fighters.

Indian authorities reported that two Indian soldiers and a suspected militant were killed late on Friday in the India administered Kashmir district of Kulgam on Saturday.

Two soldiers were also injured as per Indian army officials.

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