ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistan recalled its ambassador to Tehran on Wednesday, a day after Iran launched air strikes on Pakistan that it said claimed bases of a militant Sunni separatist group. Islamabad angrily condemned the attack as a “flagrant violation” of its airspace and said it killed two children.

Tuesday’s attack on Pakistan’s restive southwestern Balochistan province threatened diplomatic ties between the two neighbors, but both sides appeared wary of provoking the other. Iran and nuclear-armed Pakistan have long viewed each other with suspicion over militant attacks.

The attack also threatened to further inflame violence in a Middle East unsettled by Israel’s ongoing war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran launched attacks in Iraq and Syria late Monday over an alleged Islamic State suicide attack that killed over 90 people earlier this month.

Mumtaz Zahra Baloch, spokeswoman for Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry, announced that Islamabad was recalling the country’s ambassador to Iran over the attacks.

“Iran’s unprovoked and blatant breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty last night is a violation of international law and the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter,” she said in a televised address

Baloch added that Pakistan had asked the Iranian ambassador, who was in Tehran at the time of the attack, not to return. Iran did not immediately recognize Pakistan’s decision.

Iranian state media reports, later retracted without explanation, said the paramilitary Revolutionary Guards had attacked bases of the militant group Jaish al-Adl, or the Army of Justice. The group, which seeks an independent Balochistan and has spread across Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, acknowledged the attack in a statement posted online.

Six bomb-carrying drones and missiles hit houses where the militants said their fighters’ children and wives were staying. Jaish al-Adl said two children were killed and two women and a young girl were injured in the attack.

Videos shared by Baloch activist group HalVash, purportedly from the site, showed a burning building and two charred small bodies.

According to a Pakistani intelligence report, the two children killed were a six-year-old girl and an 11-month-old boy. Three women between the ages of 28 and 35 were injured. The report said three or four drones were also fired from the Iranian side, hitting a mosque and other buildings, including a house.

Jan Achakzai, a spokesman for Balochistan province, also condemned the attack.

“Pakistan has always sought cooperation from all countries in the region – including Iran – to combat terrorism.” “This is unacceptable and Pakistan has the right to respond to any aggression against its sovereignty.”

A senior Pakistani security official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to reporters and said Iran had not shared any information before the attack. He said Pakistan reserves the right to respond at a time and place of the country’s choosing and such an attack will be measured and in line with public expectations.

“The dangerous precedent Iran has set is destabilizing and has reciprocal effects,” the official said.

However, there were signs that Pakistan was trying to contain anger over the attack. The country’s typically outspoken and nationalistic media reported Wednesday’s attack with unusual restraint.

Iranian state media, meanwhile, continued to avoid covering the attacks, instead discussing a joint naval exercise that Pakistan and the Iranian navy held in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday. Pakistani officials confirmed the exercise but said it came earlier than Iran’s attacks.

Pakistani defense analyst Syed Muhammad Ali said the government would carefully consider possible retaliation.

The country’s air defense and missile systems will be deployed primarily along the eastern border to respond to possible threats from India. But it could consider taking some measures to respond to such attacks on the western border with Afghanistan and Iran, Ali said.

Jaish al-Adl was founded in 2012 and Iranian officials believe the company operates largely in Pakistan. The group has carried out bombings and kidnapping members of the Iranian border police in the past. In December, suspected Jaish al-Adl members killed 11 people and injured eight others in a nighttime attack on a police station in southeastern Iran. Another recent attack killed another police officer in the area.

In 2019, Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for a suicide bus attack that killed 27 members of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard.

Iran suspects Sunni-majority Pakistan is harboring insurgents, possibly at the behest of its regional arch-rival Saudi Arabia. However, Iran and Saudi Arabia reached a détente brokered by China last March, leading to an easing of tensions. Pakistan, for its part, has in the past blamed Iran for militant attacks on its security forces.

Iran has fought militants in border areas, but a missile and drone attack on Pakistan is unprecedented.

It remains unclear why Iran launched the attack now, especially since its foreign minister met Pakistan’s interim prime minister at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, the same day.

Following the Islamic State bombings this month, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry claimed that the two bombers involved in the attack traveled from Afghanistan to Iran via Iran’s southeastern border at the Jalg border crossing – meaning they traveled via Balochistan.

Pakistan’s Balochistan province, as well as the neighboring Iranian provinces of Sistan and Balochistan, have faced low-level insurgencies by Baloch nationalists for more than two decades. They initially wanted a share of the province’s resources, but later launched a rebellion for independence.

The Iranian attack on Pakistan came less than a day after Iranian attacks on northern Iraq that killed several civilians. Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations and summoned Iran’s charge d’affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday in protest. Iran has also separately attacked Syria.

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Gambrell reported from Jerusalem.