Pakistan on Wednesday accused neighboring Iran of violating Pakistani airspace and carrying out a strike that led to the deaths of two children.
Islamabad’s Foreign Ministry released a statement expressing “strong condemnation” for the “unprovoked violation” of Pakistani airspace hours after Iranian state media said missiles and drones had destroyed bases of the militant group Jaish al-Adl on Tuesday. “This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty is completely unacceptable and can have serious consequences,” Pakistan’s statement read.
The strike comes after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards carried out attacks in Iraq and Syria, with the latter targeting sites associated with ISIS after the group claimed responsibility for bombings which killed 86 people in Iran this month. Jaish al-Adl or “Army of Justice,” a separatist militant group seeking independence for Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, has previously attacked the Iranian military in the Pakistani-border area.
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Iran’s state-run Nournews reported that two “important headquarters” belonging to the group were targeted in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. “These headquarters were completely destroyed by a combination of missiles and drone strikes,” the report read, without providing any information on casualties. “The central government of Pakistan does not have complete control over this mountainous region, and therefore terrorist groups use the existing security vacuum to create training bases, supplies and manufacture terrorist equipment,” the report claimed.
In its statement condemning the attack, Pakistan said three girls had also been injured in the strike. “It is even more concerning that this illegal act has taken place despite the existence of several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran,” the statement continued. It added that Islamabad had lodged its “strong protest” with Iran’s Foreign Ministry.
“Additionally, the Iranian Charge d’affaires has been called to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to convey our strongest condemnation of this blatant violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and that the responsibility for the consequences will lie squarely with Iran,” the statement added.
The latest attack comes after Iran claimed to have destroyed Israel’s “spy headquarters” on Tuesday in the city of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous region. A regional security council said four people were killed in the attack, which was condemned by both the governments of Iraq and the U.S.
Tehran’s proxies have also been attacking U.S. military bases in Iraq and Syria since the beginning of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, with Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen similarly targeting international shipping vessels in the Red Sea with missiles since the outbreak of the conflict.
The Biden administration has sought to prevent the Gaza war fromm spreading into a wider regional conflict, but American forces have conducted strikes and even potentially lost troops during recent operations against the Houthis.
The U.S. military on Tuesday said that two Navy SEALs were lost at sea last week during a ship-boarding operation in the Gulf of Aden on a boat which was found to be transporting Iran-made missile components bound for Yemen. Later in the day, U.S. Central Command said its forces had destroyed four Houthi anti-ship ballistic missiles “prepared to launch from Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen.”
