NEW DELHI: Indian Air Force’s pre-dawn airstrikes at Balakot in Pakistan on February 26 was codenamed as “Operation Bandar (monkey)”. The strikes were conducted by its Mirage-2000 fighters against the major Jaish-e-Mohammed training centers at Balakot after India was shocked by the suicide attack on a CRPF convoy at Pulwama.
The Army,code-named its operational alert and shoring up of defenses along the border to thwart a possible Pakistan retaliation to the air strikes as “Operation Zafran” (saffron flowers used in
cooking), according to some sources.
A source said that the idea behind naming the operation as ‘Operation Bandar’ was to give a mundane tag to the air strikes so that the operational secrecy is maintained. “The name sounds like routine, small-time affair,” said a source.
The Navy did not assign any specific name to the deployment of its warships and submarines in the north Arabian Sea as they were already there as part of Tropex-2019 (theatre level operational readiness exercise) underway at that time.
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