In his first public event hours after the IAF carried out strikes at Jaish terror camp, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday pledged to uphold the country’s honour. “It is such a moment that we should salute our bravehearts, bow to them. I assure you that the nation is in safe hands,” PM Modi told a gathering of ex-servicemen in Rajasthan.

“I won’t let this country down,” said PM Modi, recalling that he had pledged to protect the country’s best interests back when he came to office in 2014.

“There is nothing more important than this country,” PM Modi said, without making a direct reference to the overnight strikes by the Indian Air Force at terror group Jaish-e-Mohammed’s biggest terror camp across the Line of Control.

The government had, hours earlier, confirmed that the IAF’s Mirage-2000 jets had carried out a strike across the Line of Control. It was widely seen as punitive action for the Pulwama terror attack carried out by Jaish terrorists about a fortnight earlier.

The strike was carried out on the basis of credible intelligence and designed to target the Jaish camp without any civilian casualties, the Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said.

The strike on terror camp comes 12 days after the Pulwama terror attack which killed 40 CRPF jawans after a Jaish terrorist rammed an explosive-laden vehicle into a CRPF convoy on Jammu-Srinagar highway on February 14.