Pakistan was receiving real-time intelligence from China about India’s important military deployments during Operation Sindoor, a senior Indian Army officer said on Friday.

Lieutenant General Rahul R Singh, the deputy Army chief (capability development and sustenance), said at an event organised by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry that India must be prepared for future attacks on its population centres.

Singh also highlighted the need for strengthening air defence capabilities.

ANI quoted the deputy army chief as saying: “When the DGMO [director general of military operations]-level talks were going on, Pakistan actually was mentioning that ‘we know that your such and such important sort of...vector is primed and it is ready for action...I would request you to perhaps pull it back’. So he was getting live inputs from China.”

“That is one place we really need to move fast and take appropriate action”, he added.

Singh added that India was effectively up against three adversaries during the four-day conflict: with Pakistan leading the front, China offering extensive support and Turkey playing an important role by providing drones “along with trained individuals who were there”, ANI reported.

“In the last five years, 81% of the military hardware that Pakistan is getting is Chinese,” Singh said. “[China] is able to test [its] weapons against various other weapon systems that are there, so it’s like a live lab available to them.”

Tensions between New Delhi and Islamabad escalated on May 7 when the Indian military carried out strikes – codenamed Operation Sindoor – on what it claimed were terrorist camps in Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The strikes were in response to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which killed 26 persons on April 22.

The Pakistan Army retaliated to Indian strikes by repeatedly shelling Indian villages along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir. At least 22 Indian civilians and eight defence personnel were killed in the shelling.

India and Pakistan on May 10 reached an “understanding” to halt firing following the four-day conflict.