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Pakistan
AsiaSouth Asia

Pakistan retaliates with air strikes on Iran terrorist hideouts as tensions soar

  • Nine civilians were killed in explosions around the city of Saravan in Iran’s southeast
  • The attacks came after Tehran targeted the Jaish al-Adl group in Pakistan, prompting Islamabad to recall its envoy from the Middle Eastern nation

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Pakistani troops ride on the back of a vehicle in Balochistan province, where the South Asian nation and Iran share a sparsely populated border of nearly 1,000km. File photo: Bloomberg
Agence France-Presse

Pakistan said on Thursday it carried out strikes against militant targets in Iran, with Tehran reporting a death toll of nine civilians after staging its own air raid in Pakistan earlier this week.

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Nuclear-armed Pakistan and neighbouring 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 against Hamas in Gaza 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 Sistan-Baluchistan province, Pakistan’s foreign ministry said.

It said the action was taken in light of “credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities”, adding that “a number of terrorists were killed”.

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Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that at least nine people, including women and children, were killed in blasts around the city of Saravan in the country’s southeast.

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