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Islamabad:
Pakistan’s caretaker Prime Minister Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar will cut short his visit to the World Economic Forum in Davos after Islamabad announced strikes in Iran, the government said.
“He has decided to cut short his visit in view of the ongoing developments,” foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch said in a press conference.
Pakistan said Thursday it carried out strikes against militant targets in Iran, with Tehran reporting a death toll of seven civilians after staging its own air raid in Pakistan earlier this week.
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 Huthi 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”.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that at least three women and four children were killed in blasts around the city of Saravan in the country’s southeast.
An “informed official” was quoted as telling state media: “Iran demands an immediate explanation from the Pakistani authorities about this incident”.
Tehran and Islamabad frequently accuse each other of allowing militants to operate from the other’s territory to launch attacks, but it is rare that official forces on either side engage.
“Pakistan fully respects the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Islamabad’s foreign ministry said.
“The sole objective of today’s act was in pursuit of Pakistan’s own security and national interest which is paramount and cannot be compromised.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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