Iranian gunmen kill 9 foreigners near Pak border, days after missile attacks: Report

This comes more than a week after deadly cross-border firing by Iran, Pakistan (Representational)

Tehran:

Gunmen killed nine foreign nationals in southeastern Iran near the Pakistan border on Saturday, Iranian media reported, more than a week after deadly cross-border shootings by the neighbors.

“According to witnesses, this morning unidentified armed men killed nine non-Iranians in a house in the Sirkan neighborhood of Sarwan city in Sistan-Baluchestan province,” Mehr news agency reported.

The agency said no group or individual has so far claimed responsibility.

The deadly attack came after a rare military action in the open border region of Balochistan – which is divided between the two countries – which had already escalated regional tensions due to the Israel-Hamas war.

Sistan-Baluchistan is one of the few predominantly Sunni Muslim provinces in Shia-majority Iran.

It has seen persistent unrest involving cross-border drug smuggling gangs and insurgents from the Baluchi ethnic minority, as well as jihadists.

On January 18, Pakistan launched air strikes on “terrorist targets” in Iran, two days after Iran launched attacks on its territory.

Tehran said it targeted the jihadist group Jaish al-Adl, which has carried out several deadly attacks in Iran in recent months.

The group, formed in 2012, has been blacklisted by Iran as a “terrorist” organisation.

The Iranian attacks, which Pakistan said killed at least two children, drew sharp criticism from Islamabad, which recalled its ambassador from Tehran and barred Iran’s envoy from returning to Islamabad.

Tehran also summoned Islamabad’s charge d’affaires over the Pakistani attacks, which killed at least nine people.

However, both countries announced last Monday that they had decided to de-escalate tensions and resumed diplomatic missions with both ambassadors returning to their posts.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)