Gen Anil Chauhan said an Indian loitering munition may have accidentally struck Kirana Hills during Operation Sindoor.
The drone was searching for radars around Sargodha and may have hit the hills after running out of fuel.
Chauhan stressed Kirana Hills, believed to house Pakistan's nuclear facilities, was not deliberately targeted.
Former Chief of Defence Staff General Anil Chauhan on Tuesday said an Indian loitering munition may have struck Pakistan’s Kirana Hills during Operation Sindoor last year, but stressed that the area, believed to house nuclear facilities, was not deliberately targeted.
Speaking at the ‘VIMARSH’ event on Operation Sindoor and its aftermath at the Vivekananda International Foundation in New Delhi, Chauhan explained that Indian loitering ammunition had been sent to locate radars around Sargodha, ran out of fuel and unintentionally hit the nearby nuclear site at Kirana Hills.
"I think I'll clarify this... on occasions, it's been asked whether Kirana Hills were hit or not, which is where their (Pakistan's) nuclear facilities are... Before those strikes, we had sent in a lot of loitering munitions at Sargodha and Kirana Hills is about 10 kilometres north of Sargodha. So the loitering ammunition is looking for radars which are in and around Sargodha, and it has a lifetime, which means it will loiter for about two hours, and once it does not find a target, it comes down and hits somewhere," Gen Chauhan said.
"It must have come and hit one of those hills. So that could be one of the reasons as to what people asked, because Pakistani media also showed some kind of images in which there was smoke coming out from Kirana Hills," he added.
Chauhan said the incident could explain earlier Pakistani media reports showing smoke emerging from the area. He also said Air Marshal AK Bharti, who was Director General of Air Operations during Operation Sindoor, had been correct in stating that India had not deliberately targeted Kirana Hills.
Bharti had said on May 12, 2025, in response to speculation that India had struck the area: "Thank you for telling us that Kirana Hills houses some nuclear installations. We did not know about it. We have not hit Kirana Hill."
Chauhan also revealed that the Indian Air Force had received approval to strike Sargodha and added that the Air Chief had sought his approval and was asked to identify two additional targets.
"The Air Chief asked me whether he should strike Sargodha; I said, Go ahead. I said, could you please identify two more targets, so one of the targets he identified was Skardu," Chauhan said.
However, the planned Skardu strike was later changed to Bholari due to bad weather. The IAF subsequently carried out an attack on a hangar at Bholari, whose visuals became a sensation and gathered international coverage.
His comments came three months after his superannuation and almost 15 months after India carried out Operation Sindoor in retaliation to Pahalgam terror attack on April 22 last year in which 26 civilians were brutally killed by the Pakistani backed terrorists.
