Pakistan retaliates after Iran attacks

ISLAMABAD — In an expansion of hostilities rippling through the region, Pakistan said it had carried out airstrikes inside Iran, a day after Iranian forces attacked what they said were militant camps in Pakistan.

The Pakistani Foreign Affairs Ministry said the country’s forces had conducted “precision military strikes” against what it called terrorist hideouts in southeastern Iran. Iranian officials said nine people were killed, including four children, and Pakistani officials said the death toll of the Iranian strikes included at least two children.

A senior Pakistani security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Pakistan had struck at least seven locations used by separatists from the Baluch ethnic group about 30 miles inside the Iranian border. The official said air force fighter jets and drones had been used in the Pakistani retaliatory strikes.

Pakistan’s strikes came a day after Iran’s surprise attacks within the borders of Pakistan and Iraq, which Iran said were aimed at militant training camps and a response to domestic terrorism.

In a statement, Iran’s Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the attacks, calling them “unbalanced and unacceptable,” and saying the Islamic Republic “considers the security of its people and its territorial integrity as a red line.”

Iran’s minister of interior, Ahmad Vahidi, said nine people had been killed in the attacks, including four children and three women. Speaking to state television, he said the people were from Pakistan and not Iranian citizens and had been killed when their homes, near the town of Saravan near the Pakistan border, were hit by the strikes.