Pakistan retaliatory airstrikes on Iran kill at least 9 people

Pakistan's air force launched retaliatory airstrikesin Iran early Thursday allegedly targeting militant hideouts, an attack that killed at least nine people and further raised tensions between the neighbouring nations.

The strikes in Sistan and Baluchestan province follow Iran's attack Tuesday on Pakistani soil that killed two children in the southwestern Baluchistan province.

Iran summoned Pakistan's charge d'affaires in the country.

Pakistan already had withdrawn its ambassador over Tuesday's attack.

Pakistan's Foreign Ministry described their attack Thursday as "a series of highly co-ordinated and specifically targeted precision military strikes."

"This morning's action was taken in light of credible intelligence of impending large scale terrorist activities," the Foreign Ministry said in a statement. "This action is a manifestation of Pakistan's unflinching resolve to protect and defend its national security against all threats."

Pakistan's military described using "killer drones, rockets, loitering munitions and standoff weapons" in the attack. Stand-off weapons are missiles fired from aircraft at a distance likely meaning Pakistan's fighter jets didn't enter Iranian airspace.

Strikes kill 4 children

A deputy governor of Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province, Ali Reza Marhamati, gave the casualty figures from Thursday's strike, saying the dead included three women, four children and two men near the town of Saravan along the border in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province. He added that the dead were not Iranian citizens and acknowledged a separate blast near Saravan as well.

The Baluch Liberation Army, an ethnic separatist group that's operated in the region since 2000, said in a statement the strikes targeted and killed its people.

"Pakistan will have to pay a price for it," the group warned. "Now the Baluch Liberation Army will not remain silent. We will avenge it and we announce war on the state of Pakistan."

Pakistan's caretaker Prime Minister Anwaarul-Haq-Kakar, who is in Switzerland to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, cut his trip short to return home, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said.

"The government and military have been under immense pressure," said Abdullah Khan, an analyst at the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies. "Iran celebrated [Tuesday's] attack in its media and the Pakistani public perception of a strong army is not as it used to be, so it had to respond."

The two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories. The strikes imperil diplomatic relations between the two neighbours, as Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long regarded each other with suspicion over militant attacks.

Iran and Pakistan share a 900-kilometre, largely lawless border in which smugglers and militants freely pass between the two nations. The route is also key to global opium shipments coming out of Afghanistan.

China urges restraint

China, a crucial partner in both countries, urged restraint. Beijing is a key regional player and has a major Belt and Road development in Gwadar port in Pakistan's Baluchistan province.

"China sincerely hopes that both sides can exercise calm and restraint and avoid escalation of tension," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday.

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Both Iran and Pakistan face internal political pressures. For Iran, there's been growing pressure for action after the Islamic State group attack, Israel's war on Hamas and wider unrest against its theocracy.

Iran also staged airstrikes late Monday in Iraq and Syria over an Islamic State-claimed suicide bombing that killed over 90 people in early January.

Meanwhile, Pakistan faces a crucial February general election as its military remains a powerful force in its politics. The risk of escalation remained Thursday as Iran's military will begin a planned annual air defence drill from its port of Chabahar near Pakistan all across the south of the country to Iraq.

Pakistan's Baluchistan province, as well as Iran's neighbouring Sistan and Baluchestan province, already have faced a low-level insurgency by Baluch nationalists for more than two decades. However, the groups targeted in the days of strikes are different.

Jaish al-Adl, the Sunni separatist group that Iran targeted Tuesday, grew out of another Islamic extremist group known as Jundallah once alleged to have ties to al-Qaeda. Jaish al-Adl has long been suspected of operating out of Pakistan and launching attacks on Iranian security forces.

The Baluch Liberation Army, which has no religious component and has launched attacks against Pakistani security forces and Chinese interests, is suspected of hiding out in Iran.