Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that his country carried out an airstrike in Pakistan to target “an Iranian terrorist group” and not Pakistani civilians.
“We only targeted Iranian terrorists on Pakistani soil,” Hossein Amir-Abdollahian declared at the Davos Forum, the day after the strike carried out by Iran which was condemned by Islamabad.
He is the first Iranian official to officially confirm this operation which killed two children, according to Pakistani authorities.
“No civilian from the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan was targeted by Iranian missiles and drones. The so-called Jaish al-Adl group (Army of Justice in Arabic, Editor’s note), which is an Iranian terrorist group, was targeted,” the Iranian minister insisted.
“This group found refuge in certain places in the province of Baluchistan”, in western Pakistan, bordering Iran, he added. He “led numerous operations in Iran, in particular that in the Rask police station”, in which eleven Iranian police officers were killed in December.
Mr. Amir-Abdollahian stressed that this file had been discussed “on multiple occasions with Pakistani officials”.
“We respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan” but “we do not accept that our national security is threatened and we have no reservations or hesitation when it comes to our national interests,” he said. -he continued.
The minister did not comment on Islamabad’s decision to summon Iran’s representative to Pakistan to protest against “an unjustified violation of its airspace”, and to recall its ambassador from Tehran.
A few hours before the strike on Wednesday, Pakistan’s interim prime minister, Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, met Mr. Amir-Abdollahian on the sidelines of the Davos Forum.
On Tuesday, Iran launched missile attacks on what it called “spy” headquarters and “terrorist” targets in Syria and autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan.