Pakistan's foreign ministry said Thursday it had carried out strikes against militant targets in Iran, after Tehran launched attacks on Pakistani territory.
"This morning Pakistan undertook a series of highly coordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes against terrorist hideouts in Siestan-o-Baluchistan province of Iran," a foreign ministry statement said, adding that a "number of terrorists were killed".
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Jalil Abbas Jilani had earlier told his Iranian counterpart that the unprecedented attack by Iran seriously damaged the ties between the two nations.
Iranian missiles and drones on Tuesday night targeted two bases of the Balochi militant group Jaish al Adl in Pakistan's border town of Panjgur in Balochistan province. Jilani, who is currently leading the Pakistan delegation to the Ministerial Meeting of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kampala, Uganda, on Wednesday in a telephonic conversation with Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian stressed that the attack conducted by Iran inside the Pakistani territory on January 16 was not only a serious breach of Islamabad's sovereignty but also an egregious violation of international law and the spirit of bilateral relations between Pakistan and Iran, the Foreign Office said in an overnight statement.
Expressing Pakistan's unreserved condemnation of the attack, the foreign minister added that the incident has caused serious damage to bilateral ties between Pakistan and Iran, the statement said. The Foreign Minister added that Pakistan reserved the right to respond to this provocative act. Stressing that terrorism was a common threat to the region and required concerted and coordinated efforts to combat this menace, Jilani underlined that unilateral actions could seriously undermine regional peace and stability.
"No country in the region should tread this perilous path," the minister told his Iranian counterpart. Traditional warm ties between the two neighbours nose-dived to the lowest ebb after the unprecedented attack by the Iranian forces in the country's southwest. Pakistan in retaliation expelled the Iranian ambassador while calling back his envoy from Tehran.
(With inputs from AFP, AP via PTI)
