India's missile misfire had put Saudi, Dubai, Kuwait, Qatar planes at risk

Agencies

March 17, 2022

New Delhi, Mar 17: A missile that was accidentally fired from India last week narrowly missed dozens of commercial jets that were in the same skies.

Several planes passed through the direct trajectory of the missile that day, which flew from the Indian garrison town of Ambala and ended up in Mian Channu in Eastern Pakistan. They included a Flydubai jet heading to Dubai from Sialkot, an IndiGo plane from Srinagar to Mumbai and an Airblue Ltd. flight from Lahore to Riyadh. All crossed the missile’s trajectory within an hour of its accidental launch, data from flight-tracking application Flightradar24 show.

Other international flights in the vicinity of the missile’s trajectory -- and within its range -- included a Kuwait Airways Co. jet heading to Guangzhou from Kuwait City, a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight to Riyadh from New Delhi, and a Qatar Airways service from Kathmandu to Doha, the data show. No advisory to pilots operating in the vicinity -- known as a notice to airmen or NOTAM -- was issued.

A time-lapse video of the airspace -- prepared by Flightradar24 on request from Bloomberg News -- showed busy activity in the skies within an hour and half of both sides of 7 p.m. local time on March 9, which India said was the approximate time of the accidental launch. India’s “robust” missile handling procedures are being reviewed and will be strengthened further, Defense Minister Rajnath Singh told lawmakers earlier this week.

India says it was reviewing missile handling protocols

The averted tragedy is reminiscent of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 in 2014, when a missile owned by a Russia-based military unit hit the plane over Ukraine, killing all 298 people aboard. In 2020, Iran unintentionally shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet it mistook for a cruise missile, killing 176.“Very unfortunate. It could have led to a disaster, what if it hit a Pakistan International aircraft?” said Mark Martin, founder of Dubai-based Martin Consulting. “The bigger concern is what if it was taken as a hostile action by Pakistan? We can’t brush it under the carpet, those accountable must be held accountable. This could have escalated into a full-blown conflict.”

The Indian mishap last week had the potential of turning deadly, with Pakistan preparing to launch a similar missile to strike India, Bloomberg News reported earlier this week. The nuclear-armed Indian neighbour eventually held fire after an initial assessment indicated something was amiss.

The flight path of the missile -- which Pakistan continuously monitored from near the point of its origin in Sirsa in India -- endangered many international and domestic passenger flights both in Indian and Pakistani airspace and could have resulted in a “major aviation disaster,” Pakistan’s military spokesman Babar Iftikhar told reporters in the northern city of Rawalpindi on March 10. The missile flew at an altitude of 40,000 feet and an ultimate speed of Mach 3 (2,300 miles) an hour, Tariq Zia, a spokesman for the Pakistan Air Force said in the same briefing.

Modern commercial jets tend to cruise below and around that altitude.

A top official at India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation didn’t respond to a request for comment. Pakistan’s Civil Aviation Authority and India’s defense ministry also didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

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‘Israel’s sole objective is erasing entire Palestinian presence’

News Network

November 21,2024

Hamas says the Israeli regime’s sole objective lies in “erasing” the entirety of the Palestinian population from across the Palestinian territories.

Khalil al-Hayya, a ranking official with the Gaza Strip-based Palestinian resistance movement, made the remarks to the Palestinian al-Aqsa TV on Wednesday.

“The occupation targets everyone—it strikes hospitals, civil defense, women, children, and the elderly,” he said, adding that the regime sought to “empty Gaza of its residents, and displace the Palestinian people to fulfill its dreams of building a Zionist Jewish state across all of Palestine.”

The remarks came amid the regime’s October 2023-present war of genocide on the coastal sliver that has so far claimed the lives of nearly 44,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children.

“This unprecedented aggression in modern times evokes scenes from the dark ages of human history, having crossed all red lines and exceeded every expectation of brutality in the modern era,” the Palestinian official lamented.

He also regretted that the regime had added “systematic and dangerous starvation to its aggression, falsely claiming before the world that it allows 250 [aid] trucks into Gaza daily. In reality, the number of trucks is far fewer.”

Hayya, meanwhile, regretted that “scenes of children torn apart, women screaming over their children, and heart-wrenching destruction have failed to stir enough humanity to stop these crimes.”

He decried the United States for vetoing the United Nations Security Council’s resolutions that are aimed at bringing about a potential ceasefire in the war, saying this indicated Washington’s “partnership in the aggression” and a simultaneous siege that the Israeli regime has been enforcing on Gaza.

Addressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the official asserted that, despite what the Israeli official is after, Hamas would not hand over the regime’s captives “without [the regime’s] stopping the war.”

He called Netanyahu “the main obstacle” in the way of cessation of the aggression, saying the Israeli premier “blocks any progress for political reasons,” and citing his preventing conclusion of a ceasefire agreement in July.

Hayya also warned that the regime sought to expand the war beyond Gaza, but asserted that its goals are “impossible and will never happen.”

“Today, the enemy exposes its true intentions of extermination and displacement, but it will fail,” he stressed.

“The Palestinian people are resilient and will not surrender, as they believe in their humanitarian and political cause. The enemy and its allies will not succeed in achieving their goals. This steadfast people will endure, and the occupation will not prevail against them.”

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