Pakistan announces strike on ‘terrorist hideouts’ in Iran

Two days after Iran attacked its territory, Pakistan announced this Thursday that it had carried out overnight “strikes on terrorist hideouts” in Iran, killing seven people, according to Iranian public television.

Three women and four children were killed in explosions in the southeast of the country, Iranian state media reported.

“This morning, Pakistan launched a series of precise, highly coordinated and targeted strikes against terrorist hideouts in Sistan-Baluchistan province,” southeastern Iran, the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “Several terrorists were killed,” he said.

Ambassador to Iran recalled

Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that “several explosions were heard in several areas around the city of Saravan,” citing an official from Sistan and Baluchistan, where the army has faced a hidden insurgency for decades.

Tehran also carried out airstrikes on “terrorist targets” in Pakistan on Tuesday evening. Islamabad on Wednesday deemed the attack, which left two children dead, “totally unacceptable” and unjustified.

“The actions taken this morning were taken in light of credible intelligence inputs of impending large-scale terrorist activities,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry said on Thursday. According to Pakistani media, the Iranian attack took place near Panjgur, in the southwest of Balochistan (west) province, where Pakistan and Iran share a thousand-kilometer border.

In response, Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Iran and decided not to allow the return of the Iranian ambassador, who is currently in his country.

According to Iran, this is “aggression against security”

Iran’s Mehr news agency clarified that this “response with missiles and drones” was aimed at the Pakistani headquarters of the jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice in Arabic) in response to Iran’s “aggression against the security” . Jaish al-Adl, formed in 2012, has carried out several attacks on Iranian soil in recent years.

On Tuesday, Iran launched missile attacks on so-called “spy” headquarters and “terrorist” sites in Syria and the autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The Iranian strikes come as the Middle East is rocked by the war between Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip and attacks by Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels on merchant ships in the Red Sea.

Iran and Pakistan often accuse each other of allowing insurgent groups to operate from each other’s territory and carry out attacks, but official forces from both countries are rarely involved. The United States condemned the Iranian strikes, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller condemning the fact that Tehran has “violated the sovereign borders of its neighbors over the past few days.”