Pakistan denounced this Wednesday the death of two children in an aerial bombardment by Iran, after similar attacks by Tehran in Iraq and Syria against what he defined as “anti-Rani terrorist groups.”
Islamabad said in a statement that the Iranian attack on Tuesday night, near the border shared between the two countries, was “completely unacceptable and may have serious consequences.”
The attack caused the “death of two innocent boys and injured three girls,” the Foreign Ministry statement added.
Iran's Mehrnews news agency said: “the response with missiles and drones” was directed against the Pakistan headquarters of the jihadist group Jaish al-Adl and assured that it was “one more decisive step taken by Iran in response to the aggression against the security of our country.”
The Jaish al-Adl group, formed in 2012, is classified by Iran as a terrorist group and in recent years has carried out several attacks in that country. Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for a December attack on a police barracks in Rask that killed at least 11 Iranian police officers.
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The United States also classifies this movement as a terrorist organization, noting that it “mainly attacks Iranian security personnel,” in addition to carrying out assassinations, kidnappings and suicide attacks against government authorities and civilians. On Monday, Iran had launched missile attacks against “a spy headquarters” and “terrorist” targets in Iraqi Kurdistan and Syria.
Iran also launched attacks in Iraq and Syria.
These actions add to the multiple open crises in the Middle East, with the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza and the attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels in the Red Sea responded to by bombings by the United States and its allies.
Iranian Defense Minister Mohammad Reza Ashtiani stated that his country “will not limit” its security actions, while The Pakistani Foreign Ministry summoned Iran's representative in Islamabad to protest against “an unjustified violation of its airspace.”
“This violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is totally unacceptable and may have serious consequences,” the ministry warned.
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For his part, the Iranian vice president for parliamentary affairs, Mohammad Hosseini, assured that his country warned Pakistan “that they must prevent the entry into Iran of people who kill large numbers of people, it was normal that there would be a reaction from the Islamic Republic “.
China, an ally of Islamabad and Tehran, called on both countries “to act with restraint, “avoid actions that lead to an escalation of tensions and work together to maintain peace and stability.”
Since the start of the war in Gaza, the situation in the Middle East has been tense.
Israeli Army/AFP
Iran and Pakistan frequently accuse each other of supporting militants to carry out attacks from across the border, but it is rare for official forces from both parties to confront each other.
Social media accounts of Pakistani users claim that the explosions took place in the province of Balochistan, where both countries share a sparsely populated border of almost a thousand kilometers.
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Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, warned of the seriousness of the attack. “Iran has carried out attacks against Pakistan-based fighters in the past, but I don't remember anything on this scale,” he wrote in X.
“This plunges the Pakistan-Iran relationship, a delicate relationship even in the best of times, into a serious crisis,” he added.
AFP
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