dpa
Islamabad
Pakistani fighter jets on Thursday targeted alleged hideouts of separatists in neighbouring Iran, a day after Iranian bombs hit Sunni militants in cross-border strikes.
The tit-for-tat strikes by Sunni-majority Pakistan and Shiite-dominated Iran have escalated tensions, prompting regional power China to offer mediation to calm the situation.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry in Islamabad said the air force targeted the hideouts of separatists inside Iran’s Sistan province in an operation codenamed Marg Barg Saramchar.
“Marg” means death in Farsi and “Saramchar” is the term separatist militant organisations used to describe their fighters. The Iranian Mehr news agency said at least seven people were killed in the strikes. The Pakistani strikes came a day after Iranian authorities said they had targeted a compound in Pakistan’s Balochistan province allegedly being used for the fighters of Jaish al Adl group.
Jaish, a Sunni militant group linked to the Islamic State in Khurasan Province (ISKP), is believed to have carried out several deadly attacks against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and border forces in Sistan in recent years.
A top Chinese diplomat in Pakistan said on Thursday his country was ready to mediate to calm the situation, echoing a call by Beijing for both nations on Wednesday to observe restraint. China would like to “play a constructive role to settle the differences,” Yan Yundong, head of the Chinese consulate in the southern city of Karachi, told broadcaster Geo News.
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Mumtaz Baloch said Islamabad had carried out retaliatory strikes to defend its sovereignty after Iran breached the country’s defence.
Intelligence officials told DPA that Pakistani JF-17 fighter jets hit the militants’ hideouts by guided missile in a precision strike. Unmanned drones also dropped bombs inside the Iranian territory.
The hideouts that were hit in the region of Sarawan allegedly belonged to the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), a group behind deadly attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese officials working on several projects in the province. The BLA denied the claim on its social media platforms, saying the group doesn’t operate from Iran.
China is undertaking infrastructure projects in the region of Balochistan including building a deep-sea port and an airport under President Xi Jinping’s flagship Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The projects are aimed at providing Beijing access to markets in the Middle East, Europe, Africa and beyond through inland and sea routes by a web of highways and rail tracks through Pakistan.
