Targeted terrorists, not Pakistani citizens, says Iran

Following reports from Islamabad that the strike had claimed the lives of two youngsters, Tehran’s top ambassador stated on Wednesday that his nation’s military forces had targeted a “Iranian terrorist group” in Pakistan the day before.

“None of the nationals of the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan were targeted by Iranian missiles and drones,” Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

“The so-called Jaish al-Adl group, which is an Iranian terrorist group, was targeted,” he added.

According to media reports, the operation was conducted late on Tuesday, after attacks against “anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in Syria and Iraq by Tehran.

Pakistan barred Tehran’s envoy from returning to Islamabad, recalled its ambassador from Iran, and protested the strike near the countries’ shared border.

Anwar-ul-Haq Kakar, the acting prime minister of Pakistan, had a meeting with Amir-Abdollahian at the Davos Forum a few hours prior to the strike.

According to Amir-Abdollahian, Iran’s assault on “Pakistan’s soil” was a reaction to the recent, lethal strikes carried out by the Jaish al-Adl group against the Islamic republic, namely on the city of Rask in the province of Sistan-Baluchistan’s southeast.

A policeman was killed in an attack on a local police station on January 10, which occurred about a month after 11 police officers were slain in a similar attack in the area.

The Sunni Muslim extremist organization Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), which was founded in 2012 and is prohibited from entering Iran as a “terrorist” group, claimed responsibility for both attacks.