Iran holds Pakistan accountable for terrorist attacks in Saravan

TEHRAN- The Iranian interior ministry has held Islamabad accountable for the terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of several policemen in Southeastern Iran recently.

"We don’t expect the Pakistani government to allow the terrorist operations will be held against Iran from the Pakistani soil," Interior Ministry Spokesman Hossein Ali Amiri told reporters in Tehran.

He called on the Iranian foreign ministry to take more active measures in contacts with Islamabad to make the Muslim neighboring state in order not to allow their country become a launch pad for terrorist operations against Iran.

Yet, the spokesman said the terrorist attacks did not have any military value as they were only some hit-and-run operations by the terrorists who sneak into Iran from a neighboring state, carry out terrorist operations and then escape to the same country.


Amiri called for Pakistan's serious cooperation in preventing terrorists' infiltration into the Iranian soil, and said, "The Pakistani government should be held accountable for the terrorist operations."

Four Iranian police officers, including a conscript, were killed in two terrorist attacks on a border post in the Southeastern province of Sistan and Balochistan. The tragic event took place on Wednesday and Thursday in the vicinity of the
city of Saravan near the border with Pakistan. "We are now trying to identify the terrorists," Iranian Police Chief Brigadier General Esmayeel Ahmadi Moqaddam told an Iranian news agency.

Stressing that Tehran would protest with Pakistan for its tax control over the bordering areas with Iran, he said, "This is not acceptable that the terrorists use Pakistan's soil to hit Iran." "Anyway, preventing such incidents is their responsibility," Ahmadi Moqaddam stressed.

The second terrorist raid came less than 24 hours after the first one. Police have launched a probe to identify the perpetrators of the terror attack. Sistan and Balochistan Province has been the scene of a number of terrorist attacks in recent years, after Western Pakistan became a terrorist hub for various anti-Islamabad and anti-Iran militant groups.

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