At least nine people have been killed after Pakistan said it used “killer” drones and rockets in a retaliatory strike on Iranian territory Yesterday.
Iranian media said several missiles hit a village in the Sistan Baluchistan province bordering Pakistan, with four children amongst the dead.
“A number of terrorists were killed during the intelligence-based operation,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.
It described the airstrikes as a “series of highly co-ordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts”.
“The sole objective of today’s act was in pursuit of Pakistan’s own security and national interest, which is paramount and cannot be compromised,” the ministry added.
In a statement, the country’s military said: “The precision strikes were carried out using killer drones, rockets, loitering munitions and stand-off weapons.”
It said the targets were based used by the Baloch Liberation Front (BLF) and the Baloch Liberation Army.
Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-haq Kakar will cut short a visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos following the strikes, a foreign ministry spokesman said.
Iran has condemned the airstrikes, saying those killed were civilians, and has summoned Pakistan’s charge d’affaires to explain the action.
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi told state TV that “four children, three women and two men, who were foreign nationals, have been killed”.
The attack follows Iran’s strikes on Tuesday on Pakistani soil that killed two children in the southwestern Baluchistan province.
Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over border attacks, with each side blaming the other for turning a blind eye to the militants.
HalVash, an advocacy group for the Baluch people, shared images online that appeared to show the remains of the munitions used in the attack. It said a number of homes had been struck in Saravan, a city in the Iranian province of Sistan and Baluchistan.
But while the seeming tit-for-tat exchange has stoked local tensions and spread fears of a wider regional conflict breaking out from Israel’s war in Gaza, both sides have targeted the same group of insurgents, located on either side of their mutual border.
(SKY NEWS)
