Army Chief vows to defend every inch of Pakistan at any cost  

RAWALPINDI: Chief of Army Staff, General Raheel Sharif has said that let there be no doubt that our valiant armed forces have the capability to counter complete threat spectrum and InshaAllah (By God’s willing) with the backing of entire nation we will defend each and every inch of our beloved country, no matter what the cost.

According to Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), Army Chief was speaking to officers and personnel during his visit to National Counter Terrorism Centre (NCTC) located near Kharian here Friday.

General Raheel Sharif said, “Pakistan has been victim of terrorism for over a decade and sacrificed a lot but we have turned the tide against terrorism primarily due to resilience displayed by the whole nation and professionalism of our security forces.”

General Raheel visited NCTC and inaugurated state of the art features to upgrade its infrastructure to accommodate foreign Armies and own LEAs' growing demand for training with Pak Army.

Addition of new facilities have turned NCTC as the best counter terrorism training facility amongst the contemporary Armies.

COAS was briefed by Lt-Gen. Umar Farooq Durrani, Commander of the strike Corps about various aspects of NCTC and apprised him that so far 231,000 troops of armed forces and 3483 officers and men of Police and Civil Armed Forces have been trained at NCTC.

He said that besides imparting anti-terrorists training at the centre, five Joint exercises have also been conducted at NCTC with friendly countries including China, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Sri Lanka, Maldives and Turkey.

Defence Attache of various countries were also present at the occasions.

The Army Chief appreciated all those responsible for imparting training at NCTC with a focused approach in enhancing capacity building of LEAs through quality training making best use of this fully equipped facility.