New Delhi: Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has justified the country’s claim of shooting down five Indian fighter jets, including Rafales, during Operation Sindoor by citing social media content. In an interview with CNN, Asif made the unusual remark when asked whether Pakistan had any concrete evidence to support the assertion.
“It is all on social media, and Indian social media, not our social media. The debris of the jets fell on their side. It is all over the Indian media,” he said when the interviewer pushed for proof.
In the early hours of Wednesday, India launched strikes on terrorist infrastructure — including training camps and launchpads — located in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, killing dozens of militants in retaliation for the April 22 terror attack in Pahalgam.
Pakistan confirmed the strikes and the resulting casualties. However, India’s Press Information Bureau later flagged attempts by Pakistani social media users to circulate an old, unrelated image of a crashed aircraft, falsely claiming it showed a downed Rafale. The bureau clarified that the photo was from a 2021 crash.
“Beware of old images shared by pro-Pakistan handles in the present context! An old image showing a crashed aircraft is being circulated with the claim that Pakistan recently shot down an Indian Rafale jet near Bahawalpur during the ongoing Operation Sindoor. #PIBFactCheck: This image is from an earlier incident involving an IAF MiG-21 fighter jet that crashed in Moga district in Punjab in 2021,” it shared on its X handle.
In the same interview, Asif said that Pakistan was attempting to prevent the situation from escalating into a full-scale war with India.
“There is a possibility of expansion of this conflict into a full-fledged war, which we are trying to avoid,” Asif told CNN.
He further described the early Wednesday strikes as a “clear-cut violation” and warned they were “an invitation to expand the conflict and maybe convert it into something much wider and much more dangerous for the region.”
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