Separatists killed eight Pakistanis in Iran, Islamabad said Sunday, across the border from Pakistan’s Balochistan province where there are regular deadly attacks.
Pakistan has been battling a decades-long insurgency in impoverished Balochistan, which militant groups claim is being exploited by outsiders, with wealth from its natural resources syphoned off with little benefit to the local population.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Sunday condemned the “brutal killings of eight Pakistanis,” calling on Tehran to “immediately arrest the culprits, give them appropriate punishment, and make the reasons behind this brutal act public.”
The Baloch Nationalist Army (BNA), a Pakistani separatist group, and Jaish al-Adl (Arabic for Army of Justice), a Baloch jihadist group that is based in Pakistan but is also active in Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack.
The eight men killed were from Pakistan’s most populous province, Punjab, according to the Associated Press of Pakistan news agency.
Armed separatists in the area have in recent months intensified attacks on workers from other provinces, particularly Punjabis who are viewed as having strong links to the military.
Iran’s embassy in Pakistan also confirmed the death toll and condemned the attack as “terrorism,” calling, like Islamabad, for “joint efforts” to combat the violence.
Iran and Pakistan frequently accuse each other of allowing militants to operate from their territory to carry out cross-border attacks.
Both countries have conducted deadly strikes inside each other’s territory in the border region, which is regularly shaken by violent attacks by Islamist or separatist groups.
The most dramatic incident occurred in mid-March, when an armed group took a train hostage in Balochistan.
Nine Pakistanis were killed in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchestan province in January 2024.
