As per republic 2 Blasts heard. Hopefully they blasted the house.
Right! That's the SOP unless it is a huge building like DPS.
By the way, my battalion was the first to use rocket launchers in the Valley in 1990, to blast houses where terrorists were holed up which was
prohibited!!!
No heavy weapons were allowed to be used then. But we did and mounted MMGs on our jeeps too! The Corps commander Lt Gen M K Zaki was aghast when he heard this and arrived from his HQ in Srinagar at the scene where we showed him 4 killed militants laid out on a ground sheet with their weapons and ammo. He saw a couple of huge holes in the walls too made by the rocket launchers!!
Someone's gonna get sacked I thought....And that was going to be me!! But surprise! He congratulated us for the excellent job done especially as there was zero collateral damage as the civilians were first evacuated from the house before commencing the op.
He saw our MMGs mounted on jeeps too, shook his head and drove away to the Corps HQ in Srinagar.
The next day orders were passed in the Valley that troops could use RLs during CAS ops if the situation so arises, but to avoid collateral damage under all circumstances. (Nothing was mentioned about carriage of MMGs though! So we continued mounting them on jeeps during moves to and from ops).