Northern Army Commander Lieutenant General Devraj Anbu on Thursday said the Indian Army will conduct another surgical strike along the Line of Control whenever the need arises, PTI reported. He said the number of launch pads and terror camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir have gone up since Indian forces conducted the surgical strike across the Line of Control September 2016.

“The surgical strike was a point we wanted to drive home across – that the Line of Control is not a line that cannot be breached,” General Anbu told reporters. “When we want to, we will be able to breach it, go across and strike when we need. This was the message we wanted to convey and we did.”

General Anbu said nearly 475 militants are waiting to sneak into the Indian side through the Line of Control, PTI reported. “We cannot tell you the exact number of the militants,” Anbu said. “But the militants, who are waiting to cross over to this side, are nearly 250 in north Kashmir and around 225 in the south of Pir Panjal [Jammu region].”

He further said a total of 144 militants have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir so far in 2017. “While infiltration attempts have increased, the success to infiltrate has been much less than previous years despite a large number of infiltration attempts. That is because of our robust counter-infiltration grid that we have on the Line of Control,” he said.

Anbu, also the general officer commanding-in-chief of the Northern Command, ruled out a border standoff between Indian Army and the Chinese Army along the Line of Actual Control in Ladakh sector. “You have certain faceoffs and any issues arising out of this due to difference of perception. We have a mechanism which is in place,” he added.