ALERT! Army chief vows to defend every inch of Pakistan
In response after Sunday’s assault on an army camp in Indian occupied Kashmir by Indian direction to recent threats of punitive strikes, Chief of Army Staff General Raheel Sharif has said the army will defend every corner of the state at any cost.
“Let there be no doubt our valiant armed forces have the capacity to counter complete risk spectrum and Insha Allah [God willing] with the backing of entire nation we will defend every single inch of our precious country, no matter what the cost,” the army chief said while addressing soldiers of the Pakistan Army on Friday.
General Raheel’s remarks came during his visit to the National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) near Kharian, Punjab where he inaugurated state of the art features to upgrade its infrastructure to adapt foreign armies and the Pakistani LEAs’ growing demand for training with Pakistan Army.
“Pakistan has been victim of terrorism for over a decade and lost a lot but we now have turned the tide against terrorism primarily due to resilience displayed by the whole nation and professionalism of our security forces, military’s media wing, ISPR, quoted the army chief as saying.
According to the ISPR, the inclusion of new facilities has transformed NCTC into the finest counterterrorism training facility among modern armies. The COAS was briefed by Lt Gen Umar Farooq Durrani, Commander of the Strike Corps about various aspects of NCTC and apprised the COAS that so far 231,000 troops of armed forces and 3,483 officers and men of police and civil armed forces have been trained at the centre.
“Besides imparting anti-terrorists training at the center, 5 joint exercises also have been conducted with friendly states including China, Kingdom of Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Turkey,” the commander described at NCTC.
Meanwhile, defence attachés of various countries were also present at the occasion. The military leader also valued all those responsible for imparting training at NCTC with a concentrated approach in improving capability building of LEAs through quality training making greatest use of the fully equipped facility.
