Pakistan accused Iran on Wednesday of an airstrike that killed two children on its territory, after Tehran carried out similar attacks in Iraq and Syria against what Iran called “anti-Iran terrorist groups.”
Islamabad said the attack, which took place near the two countries' shared border, was “totally unacceptable” and unjustified.
Iranian authorities did not immediately comment. But according to Iranian state agency Nour News, the attack resulted in the destruction of the headquarters of the jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice in Arabic) in Pakistan.
Jaish al-Adl, founded in 2012, is considered a terrorist group in Tehran and has carried out several attacks on Iranian soil in recent years.
On Tuesday, Iran carried out missile strikes on so-called “spy” headquarters and “terrorist” targets in Syria and autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.
These Iranian attacks come at a time when the Middle East is reeling from the war between the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas and Israel in the Gaza Strip and attacks by pro-Iranian Houthi rebels from Yemen on merchant ships in the Red Sea.
The Islamabad statement did not specify where the Iranian attack took place. According to Pakistani media, it occurred near Panjgur in the southwest of Balochistan (West) province, where the two countries share a thousand-kilometer-long border.
A few hours before the attack, interim Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar met with the head of Iranian diplomacy, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, on the sidelines of the Davos Forum (Switzerland).
“This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty is completely unacceptable and may have serious consequences,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry warned in a statement.
The attack on Pakistani territory on Tuesday evening “resulted in the death of two innocent children and the injury of three little girls,” the same source said.
Iranian representative summoned
Pakistan said it summoned Iran's representative in Islamabad to protest against “an unjustified violation of its airspace.”
On Tuesday evening, Nour News wrote on
“These headquarters were destroyed by missiles and drones,” the same source added.
In December, this organization claimed responsibility for the attack on a police station in Rask, Sistan-Baluchestan province, in which 11 Iranian police officers were killed.
The United States, which classifies Jaish al-Adl as a terrorist organization, claims that the group “primarily targets members of the Iranian security forces, but also government officials and civilians, through assassinations, kidnappings and suicide bombings.”
“Illegal act”
Tehran and Islamabad often accuse each other of allowing rebel groups to operate from each other's territory to launch attacks, but it is rare for official forces from both countries to go on the attack.
“What is even more worrying is that this illegal act took place despite the existence of multiple communication channels between Pakistan and Iran,” Pakistani diplomacy said.
“Pakistan has always maintained that terrorism is a common threat to all countries in the region and requires coordinated action,” the statement added. “Such unilateral actions are not consistent with good neighborly relations and can seriously undermine bilateral trust.”
For Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington, “this throws Pakistan-Iranian relations (…) into a serious crisis.”
“Iran has conducted cross-border operations against Pakistan-based militants in the past, but I cannot recall anything of this magnitude,” he wrote on X.
“Clear act of aggression”
Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran on Tuesday and condemned “a clear act of aggression” in the autonomous Kurdistan region, where four people were killed and six others injured in a raid, according to local authorities.
Baghdad denied Tehran's statements that the attacks were aimed at Israeli intelligence services in retaliation for Israel's killing of Iranian and allied commanders.
Iraq said it would lodge a complaint with the UN Security Council over the “attack on its sovereignty”.
Iranian diplomacy defended a “precise and targeted operation” related to the raid in Iraq, ensuring that it “identified” and “attacked” the headquarters of “criminals (…) who used precision weapons.”
Iran has made support for the Palestinian cause a central plank of its foreign policy since its 1979 Islamic revolution, calling Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 attack in Israel a “success” but denying any direct involvement.