Were you uprooting terrorists or trees? Sidhu targets Centre over IAF strikes

New Delhi, Mar 04: Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu on Monday took a swipe at the Centre, asking if 300 terrorists were indeed killed in the recent air strikes by the Indian Air Force in Pakistan's Balakot as claimed by the government.

Sharing a video in which a section of the international media questioned the IAF strikes in Balakot on 26 February, Sidhu said in the caption: "Skimmed milk masquerades as cream, things are seldom as they seem."

"Deceit possesses our land in [the] guise of fighting a foreign enemy," the Punjab minister, who left the BJP to join the Congress, tweeted.

"Were you uprooting terrorists or trees? Was it an election gimmick?" he asked.

Several opposition politicians have now attacked the BJP over numbers of casualties that have been doing the rounds -- numbers that were announced neither by the ministry of external affairs (which announced the airstrike) nor by the Air Force.

The casualty figure in the air strike on the Balakot camp will be given out by the government, Air Chief Marshal B S Dhanoa said on Monday while asserting that the Indian Air Force does not count the number of dead.

Addressing a press conference here, he said the death toll depends on the number of people present at the target.