The only confirmed victim of India’s air strike against Pakistan that rocked his mud-brick house and left him with a cut above his right eye is still sceptical whether the air strike in fact claimed lives of untold number of terrorists.

The 62-year-old Nooran Shah, a resident of Jaba village, near the northeastern town of Balakot in Pakistan's Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province raised a doubt saying: "They say they wanted to hit some terrorists. What terrorists can you see here?"

"We are here. Are we terrorists?" he questioned.

India, in retaliation to the terror attack in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama district’s that killed over 40 Central Reserve Police Force personnel has said it destroyed a major training camp of Jaish-e-Mohammed, a militant group that claimed responsibility for the attack.

India's Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said the strike killed "a very large number of Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists, trainers, senior commanders, and groups of jihadis who were being trained for Fidayeen action were eliminated." Fidayeen is a term used to describe Islamist militants on suicide missions.

Another senior government official told reporters that about 300 militants had been killed.

On Thursday, though, a senior defence official appeared to backtrack on the claims. Asked about how much damage the warplanes had caused, Air Vice Marshal R.G.K. Kapoor said it was "premature" to provide details about casualties. But he said the Indian armed forces had "fairly credible evidence" of the damage inflicted on the camp by the air strikes.

‘Operation Was a Failure’

However, the estimation made by India on previous death toll have been rubbished by Pakistan, which says the operation was a failure that saw Indian jets bomb a largely empty hillside without hurting anyone.

It is unclear whether the variance in claims will become a factor as Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeks a second term in India's general election, which must be held by May.

On the wooded slopes above Jaba, villagers pointed to four bomb craters and some splintered pine trees, but could see little other impact from the series of explosions that blasted them awake at around 3.00 a.m.

ImageSource: www.thehindu.com

"It shook everything," said Abdur Rasheed, who drives a pickup van around the area. He said there weren't any human casualties: "No one died. Only some pine trees died, they were cut down. A crow also died."

According to locals, 400 to 500 people live locally, scattered across hills in mudbrick homes. Reuters spoke to about 15 people, none of whom knew of any casualties apart from Nooran Shah.

"I haven't seen any dead bodies, only a local who was hurt by something or hit by some window, he was hurt," said Abdur Rasheed, echoing numerous others.

Mohammad Saddique, an official in Basic Health Unit, Jaba, who was on duty on the night of the attack, also dismissed claims of major casualties.

"It is just a lie. It is rubbish," he said. "We didn't receive even a single injured person. Only one person got slightly hurt and he was treated there. Even he wasn't brought here."

People in the area said Jaish-e Mohammed did have a presence, running not an active training camp but a religious school, about one km from where the explosive devices fell.

"It is Taleem ul Quran madrassa. The kids from the village study there. There is no training," said Nooran Shah.

Islamabad-based western officials also said they did not believe the Indian air force hit a militant camp. "There was no militant training camp there. It hasn't been there for a few years - they moved it. It's common knowledge amongst our intelligence," said one of them.

-Sowmya Sangam