Pakistan says Iran launched deadly air strike on its territory

Pakistan said Wednesday that Iran carried out an air strike on its territory that killed two children, after Tehran launched attacks in Iraq and Syria against what it called “anti-Iranian terrorist groups”.

Pakistan denounced the strike, near the nations’ shared border late on Tuesday, as “completely unacceptable”, saying it was unprovoked.

Iran offered no immediate official comment but its state-run Nour News agency said the attack destroyed the Pakistan headquarters of the jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice).

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.

The strike came after Iran launched missile attacks on “spy headquarters” and “terrorist” targets in Syria, and in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region.

The Iranian strikes add to multiple crises across the Middle East, with Israel waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and pro-Palestinian Huthi rebels in Yemen attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea.

Pakistan’s official statement did not say where the strike took place, but Pakistani media said it was near Panjgur in southwest Balochistan province, where the two countries share a sparsely populated border of nearly 1,000 kilometres (620 miles).

Hours before the strike, Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar had met Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“This violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty is completely unacceptable and can have serious consequences,” Pakistan’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

It said the strike “resulted in death of two innocent children while injuring three girls”.

Pakistan said it summoned Tehran’s top diplomat in Islamabad to protest at the “unprovoked violation of its airspace”.

Late Tuesday, Iran’s Nour News agency posted on X: “Minutes ago, two important headquarters of the so called Jaish-ul-Adl terrorist group was targeted in Pakistan”.