TEHRAN: Pakistan launched deadly strikes Thursday against fighters targets in Iran in retaliation for Iranian air raids on its territory, further stoking tensions and prompting Tehran to summon Pakistan's envoy.
At least nine people – mostly women and children – were killed in the strikes in restive Sistan-Baluchistan province, according to Iran's official IRNA news agency.
It came just two days after Iran conducted raids against what it described as "fighters" targets in neighbouring Pakistan, killing at least two children.
While Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan often accuse each other of allowing fighters to operate from the other's territory to launch attacks, it is rare that official forces on either side engage.
Pakistan's foreign ministry described Thursday's raids as a "series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against fighters' hideouts" in Sistan-Baluchistan.
The strikes took place at around 4:30 am, with three drones destroying four houses in a village near the city of Saravan, IRNA said, citing Alireza Marhamati, deputy governor of the province.
All those killed were Pakistanis and investigations were ongoing to determine why they were in the Iranian village, Marhamati said.
The raids targeted Baluch separatists, according to the Pakistani army. The military has been waging a decades-long fight against separatist groups in its sparsely populated border region.
The foreign ministry said the strikes were carried out due to "credible intelligence of impending large-scale fighters activities", insisting it "fully respects" Iran's sovereignty.
Iran however condemned them, and summoned Pakistan's charge d'affaires "to protest and request an explanation from the Pakistani government," Tehran's foreign ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said.
Previously, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian had defended his country's own strikes in Pakistan as a response to the Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) jihadist group's deadly attacks on the Islamic republic.
Formed in 2012, Jaish al-Adl is blacklisted by Iran as a fighters group and has carried out several attacks on Iranian soil in recent years.
Pakistan denounced Iran's strike near their shared border, recalled its ambassador from Iran and blocked Tehran's envoy from returning to Islamabad.
China offered to mediate between Pakistan and Iran, both close economic partners of Beijing.
The European Union expressed concern about the "spiral of violence in the Middle East and beyond."
Rising Iran-Pakistan tensions add to multiple crises in the Middle East, with Israel waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and Huthi rebels in Yemen attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
Meanwhile Afghanistan – which borders both Iran and Pakistan, and is home to a small Baluch minority – said the violence between its neighbours was "alarming" and urged them to "exercise restraint."
On Thursday, Pakistan's foreign ministry said Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar would cut short his visit at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, "in view of the ongoing developments."
Hours before the strike, Kakar had met the Iranian foreign minister on the sidelines of the Davos summit and posed for photographs.
Earlier this week, IRNA reported that the Iranian and Pakistani navies had carried out joint exercises in the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf.
Sistan-Baluchistan province is one of the few mainly Sunni Muslim provinces in Shiite-dominated Iran and has seen persistent unrest involving cross-border drug-smuggling gangs and rebels from the Baluchi ethnic minority as well as jihadists.
In January, Jaish al-Adl claimed an attack on a police station in the southeastern city of Rask which killed one officer. The group had carried out a similar attack in December killing 11 police officers.
On Wednesday, the group said it had killed a member of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Sistan-Baluchistan, IRNA reported.
As well as Baluch separatists, Pakistan is battling a sharp rise in militancy in border regions with Afghanistan. --AFP