BBC News: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pakistan has launched missile strikes into Iran, killing nine people, after Iran carried out strikes in Pakistan late on Tuesday.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan said its strikes had hit “terrorist hideouts” in Iran’s south-eastern Sistan-Baluchestan province.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Iran condemned the attack, which it said killed three women, two men and four children who were not Iranian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The country’s foreign ministry later said it was committed to good neighbourly relations with Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, it called on Islamabad to prevent the establishment of “bases and armed terrorist groups” on its soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reciprocal attacks come as tensions in the Middle East are high with several overlapping crises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Israel is fighting the Palestinian group Hamas in Gaza and exchanging fire with Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Meanwhile, Iran-backed groups in Iraq and Syria are targeting US forces, and the US and UK have struck the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen, who have been attacking shipping.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thursday’s strikes by Pakistan were the first external land attack on Iran since Saddam Hussein’s forces invaded in the 1980s – launching a brutal eight-year war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pakistan’s foreign ministry said its strikes around the Iranian city of Saravan had come in light of “credible intelligence of impending large-scale terrorist activities” and added that it “fully respects” Iran’s “sovereignty and territorial integrity”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In its own statement, Pakistan’s army said the “precision strikes” were conducted with drones, rockets and long-range missiles and targeted the Balochistan Liberation Army and the Balochistan Liberation Front.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Both groups are part of a decades-long struggle for greater autonomy in Balochistan, a remote region in south-western Pakistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n