Iran launched an unprecedented missile attack on Pakistan. Two children were killed and three others were injured. The attack took place on Tuesday (January 16) in a village in the southwestern province of Baluchistan on the border of the two countries.
Iran said that the attack was carried out on two bases of the militant group Jaish al-Adl. Rejecting the claim, Pakistan called the attack an "illegal act" and warned of "serious consequences".
International media Al Jazeera reported this information in a report on Wednesday (January 17).
After Iraq and Syria, Pakistan is the third country to be hit by Iranian attacks in the past few days.
In a statement, Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly condemned Iran's flagrant violation of its airspace.
Terming the incident as "totally unacceptable", the statement said the illegal act took place despite several channels of communication between Pakistan and Iran.
Pakistan conveyed the protest to a "concerned senior official" of Iran's foreign ministry in Tehran.
The protest said that the responsibility for this brazen violation of Pakistan's sovereignty and its consequences rests with Iran.
Earlier, Iran launched a ballistic missile attack on the northern Iraqi city of Erbil on Monday. The United States condemned the incident.
The Iranian attack comes amid heightened tensions across the Middle East since the October 7 war in the Gaza Strip between the Iranian-backed Palestinian group Hamas and Israel.
Iran has declared it does not want to get involved in a wider conflict, but groups in its so-called "Axis of Resistance" continue to attack Israel and its allies in a show of solidarity with the Palestinians.
Lebanese Hezbollah forces exchanged cross-border fire with Israeli forces. Shiite militias have fired drones and missiles at US forces in Iraq and Syria. And Yemen's Houthi rebels have attacked ships in the Red Sea.
Recently, Israeli strikes killed a Hamas leader in Lebanon and a Revolutionary Guard commander in Syria. An Iraqi militia leader was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq and a Houthi stronghold was bombed in Yemen.
Pakistan and Iran have fought armed separatist groups, including Jaish al-Adl, for decades in sparsely populated areas.
The two countries share a border of about 900 km.
Tehran last month targeted the group near the border, killing more than a dozen Iranian police officers.
At that time, Iran's Interior Minister Ahmad Wahidi said that the responsible militants entered the country from Pakistan.
According to the US National Intelligence Service, Jaish al-Adl is the "most active and influential" Sunni militant group operating in Sistan-Baluchestan.