Iran has summoned the Pakistani ambassador and demanded immediate steps to stop attacks by “terrorists and rebels” that sparked deadly clashes on the countries’ border, Iranian media reported Sunday.
Noor Muhammad Jadmani was reportedly called to the Iranian Foreign Ministry on Saturday following the deaths in Iran’s restive border province of Sistan-Balochistan.
Iranian Ambassador to Pakistan Ali Raza Haghighian was summoned to the Foreign Office in Islamabad the same day and Pakistan lodged a strong protest with him over the recent shooting which killed two Iranian border guards and a Pakistani paramilitary officer.
Iran claimed that rebels had tried to infiltrate the country.
“It is unacceptable that terrorists and rebels attack our country from Pakistani territory and kill our border guards,” Iranian Foreign Ministry’s western Asia director Rasul Salami reportedly said. He asked the Pakistani government to “take serious steps to prevent any recurrence of such incidents,” the Iranian media reported.
Thursday’s border shooting came after rebel attacks killed five people in Sistan-Baluchistan province earlier this month, four of them security personnel.
Iranian media reported that 14 people were arrested in connection with those attacks.
In the last month, an Iranian soldier was killed and two pro-government militiamen wounded in an attack authorities blamed on extremist group Jaishul Adl.
The same group captured five Iranian troops in February, four of whom were released in April. The fifth soldier is presumed dead but his fate remains officially unknown.
Sistan-Baluchistan has a large Sunni Muslim community in otherwise predominantly Shia Iran and it has been plagued by violence involving extremists and drug smugglers.
Ethnic Baloch straddle the border into Pakistan’s Balochistan province, where a long-running separatist conflict was revived in 2004.
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