Pakistan said today that Iran carried out an airstrike on its territory that killed two children after Tehran launched attacks in Iraq and Syria against "anti-Iranian terrorist groups".
Pakistan condemned the strike, carried out late last night near the countries' shared border, as "totally unacceptable" and said it was unprovoked.
Iran had no immediate official comment, but its state news agency Nour News said the attack destroyed the Pakistani headquarters of the Jaish al-Adl (Justice Army) jihadist group.
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 strikes against "spy headquarters" and "terrorist" targets in Syria and Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region.
The Iranian strikes add to multiple crises in the Middle East, where Israel is waging a war against Hamas in Gaza and pro-Palestinian Houthi rebels in Yemen are attacking merchant ships in the Red Sea.
Pakistan's official statement did not say where the strike was carried out, but Pakistani media said it was near Panjgur in the southwestern province of Balochistan, where the two countries share a sparsely populated border of nearly 1,000 km.
Hours before the strike, Pakistan's acting Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar met with 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 could have serious consequences," Pakistan's foreign ministry said in a statement.
It says that the strike "led to the death of two innocent children and the wounding of three girls"./BGNES
