ISLAMABAD: Pakistan said on Thursday it carried out strikes against militant targets in Iran, with Tehran reporting a death toll of at least seven civilians after staging its own air raid in Pakistan earlier this week.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan and neighboring Iran are both battling simmering insurgencies along their sparsely populated border regions.
The cross-border attacks add to multiple crises across the Middle East, with Israel waging a war on Hamas in the Gaza Strip and Houthi rebels in Yemen attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea.
"This morning, Pakistan undertook a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts" in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
The action, it said, was taken in light of "credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities," adding that "a number of terrorists were killed."
Iran's official Islamic Republic News Agency reported that at least three women and four children were killed in blasts around the city of Saravan in Sistan-Baluchistan.
An "informed official" was quoted as telling state media: "Iran demands an immediate explanation from the Pakistani authorities about this incident."
Tehran and Islamabad frequently accuse each other of allowing militants to operate from the other's territory to launch attacks, but it is rare that official forces on either side engage.
"Pakistan fully respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran," Islamabad's Foreign Affairs Ministry said.
"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," it added.
Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar will cut short his visit to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in the resort town of Davos in eastern Switzerland "in view of the ongoing developments," Foreign Affairs Ministry spokesman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told a news conference in the capital Islamabad.
The attack comes after Iran staged missile and drone attacks on the Jaish al-Adl group on Tuesday night, after Tehran also launched attacks in Iraq and Syria against what it called "anti-Iranian terrorist groups."
Islamabad said the strikes in its territory killed "two innocent children."
Formed in 2012, Jaish al-Adl is blacklisted by Iran as a terrorist group and has carried out several attacks on Iranian soil in recent years.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on Wednesday that Tehran respected the sovereignty of Pakistan, but would not allow his nation's security "to be compromised or played with."
Islamabad called the strike an "unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan's sovereignty" and recalled its ambassador to Iran and blocked Tehran's envoy — currently in the Islamic republic — from returning to the country.
China, a close partner of Iran and Pakistan, urged restraint, with Beijing's Foreign Ministry spokesman Mao Ning saying on Wednesday that both should "avoid actions that would lead to an escalation of tension."
The United States, meanwhile, condemned the Iranian strikes in Pakistan, Iraq and Syria.
State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said Tehran had violated the "sovereign borders of three of its neighbors in just the past couple of days."
Pakistan has not specified where Tuesday's Iranian strike took place.
But Pakistani media said it was near the town of Panjgur in southwestern Balochistan province, where the countries share a border of nearly 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).
The Pakistani military has been waging a decades-long fight against ethnic Baloch separatists in the province, the South Asian country's largest but poorest region.
Hours before the strike, Kakar met Amir-Abdollahian on the WEF's sidelines in Davos.
"This violation of Pakistan's sovereignty is completely unacceptable and can have serious consequences," Pakistan's Foreign Affairs Ministry statement said.
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