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Two bases of Balochi militant group Jaish al Adl in Pakistan were targeted by missiles on Tuesday, Iranian state media reported, a day after Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards attacked targets in Iraq and Syria with missiles.
The militant group has previously mounted attacks on Iranian security forces in the border area with Pakistan.
“These bases were hit and destroyed by missiles and drones,” Iranian state media reported, without elaborating.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry said two children were killed and three others were injured in what it called an “illegal” airstrike, and summoned Tehran’s senior diplomat in Islamabad to protest against the “unprovoked violation of its airspace”. The ministry did not give more details of the strikes, but Pakistani social media accounts said missile and drone strikes had been aimed at the Balochistan province which lies along the 1,000km border between the two countries.
In Iran, it was reported that the strikes were aimed at bases of a Sunni militant group, Jaish al-Adl, but references to the attack in Iranian media quickly disappeared. Iran and Pakistan have long had a tense relationship, in large part because of the activities of Balochi separatists and other militant groups in the border area. However, this would mark a significant escalation on the territory of its nuclear-armed neighbor.
On Monday, Iran fired missiles at what it claimed were Israeli “spy headquarters” near the U.S. Consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Irbil, and at targets linked to the extremist group Islamic State in northern Syria.
Four civilians were killed and six injured after missiles hit an upscale area near the consulate in Irbil, the seat of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, according to the security council of the Kurdish regional government.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said in a statement that it had hit a headquarters of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, in the Kurdish region of Iraq. Another statement said it had fired a number of ballistic missiles at “terrorist operations,” including Islamic State targets, in Syria and destroyed them.
