Iran has admitted launching a missile and drone attack on western Pakistan on Tuesday, in a landscape of conflict leaking throughout the entire Middle East.
Officials in Islamabad said two children were killed and three others injured in the attack in Balochistan.
Iran’s foreign minister said the operation targeted the militant group Jaish al-Adl, which he described as an „Iranian terrorist group” in Pakistan.
As a result the Pakistan’s government recalled its ambassador to Iran and has blocked Tehran’s envoy from returning, reports the BBC.
The Balochistan attack comes after Iran attacked targets in Iraq and Syria earlier this week.
Islamabad said the attack was „illegal” and warned of „serious consequences”.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, speaking in Davos, insisted that no Pakistani citizens had been targeted, only members of Jaish al-Adl – though this is unlikely to appease the outraged Pakistan.
Tehran says it does not want to get involved in a wider conflict. But groups in its so-called „Axis of Resistance”, which include the Houthi militants in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon and various groups in Syria and Iraq, have been carrying out attacks on Israel and its allies to show solidarity with the Palestinians. The US and UK have launched air strikes on the Houthis after they attacked commercial shipping.
Likely infuriated by recent deadly attacks on home soil, Iran seems intent on exacting revenge on those it sees as responsible. Two weeks ago Iran suffered its worst domestic attack since the Islamic Revolution, when two bombs killed 84 people at a ceremony in Kerman to commemorate the US assassination of Iran’s notorious Revolutionary Guard general, Qasem Soleimani.
Jaish al-Adl, which calls itself an „army of justice”,is an ethnic Baloch Sunni Muslim group that has carried out attacks inside Iran as well as on Pakistani government forces.
Last December Jaish al-Adl attacked a police station in Rask, a town close to the border with Pakistan.
On Monday, Iran fired ballistic missiles at Syria and Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. Iran said it was targeting Islamic State and Israel’s Mossad spy agency, both of whom it said had been involved in the Kerman bombings.
Iran then continued to strike Syria’s north-western Idlib province, which is the last remaining opposition stronghold in the country and home to 2.9 million displaced people.
