since when do you know the details of what happened? have you been given secret documents that the rest of us are not privy to?
i am not passing judgement yet, but how did a Hindu temple in Hindu Mohalla “come in the crossfire”…how does that even make sense? since when do muslim militants occupy a Hindu temple with 17 innocent people inside? this Akbar Bugti character has alleged that the government targeted the Hindu Mohalla. how do you know he is lying?
Artillery is a means of attack that is long ranged, but inaccurate.
The presence of Bugti’s loyalists in the town prevented Pakistan from attacking Bugti directly. Instead, they targetted him with a barrage of artillery.
In short, they aimed to drop artillery shells in the vicinity of Bugti’s fort in the hope of hitting the fort.
However, without having people close enough to spot the landing of mortars and rockets, and radio back corrections to enhance the accuracy of the following shots, all that you can do is make a guess from a map of where your shells are landing.
The Hindu neighbourhood of the town was next to Bugti’s fortress. The military personnel missed the fortress with the artlillery barrage and instead hit the Hindus. Remember, they weren’t able to see where they were firing at, with mortars and rockets the firing site is several kilometers away, out of visible range.
So it is perfectly plausible that they launched the explosives intending to hit bugti, but were unable to see where the shells were landing. All they had to operate on was their best guess based on maps.
If Bugti;s men would have allowed a Pakistani army artillery spotter to enter the down and direct the artillery fire onto Bugti more accurately, this whole unfortunate tragedy could have been avoided.
You know, when I read the news on Balochistan thse days, I really miss General Tikka Khan.
Say what you might about his record in East pakistan in 1971, but given 80,000 soldiers and a press blackout back in 1972, he managed to sort of the Baloch traitors with style.
Balochistan was quiet for a long, long time once Tikka Khan was done with it.
i didn’t say that this was not a plausible theory, it may have been exactly how you have described. however, neither Irem, you, or myself actually know whether or not the events played out in that manner. Bugti has made contradictory claims to the word of the government. one party is obviously not telling the truth, how are we so sure it is Bugti?
Bugti hasn’t accused the government of targetting the Hindus - he’s accused the government of firing the shots that killed the hindus and frankly he’s almost certainly correct.
They were collateral damage, because they lived close to a military target that was attacked by the government. Shots that missed the target landed on them.
Bugti had nothing to gain through firing in the direction of those Hindus. The government did have something to gain towards firing in that direction - those shots that landed on the temple could just have easily, given favourable winds, landed on bugti’s fort and killed that traitorous scumbag rather than landing on a temple and killing innocent patriotic Pakistani hindus.