Border Guards Martyred as Terrorist Infiltration Foiled

Date: 21 May 2023 - 22:34

News ID: ۱۱۵۲۸۸

TEHRAN -- Six Iranian border guards were martyred Sunday during clashes with a terrorist group in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, the judiciary’s Mizan Online website quoted local prosecutor Mehdi Shamsabadi as saying.
The guards were martyred in Saravan, near Iran’s border with Pakistan. The attack was carried out by “a terrorist group that was seeking to infiltrate the country” but “fled across the border after the clash,” Fars news agency reported.
On March 11, two policemen were martyred during clashes with “criminals” in the same region, the state news agency IRNA reported at the time.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman on Sunday said Pakistan, from which the terrorists had tried to illegally enter Iran, is expected to fulfill mutual agreements on countering terrorist groups.
Kanaani urged Pakistani authorities to do more to ensure security along the joint border with Iran.
Farah Azeem Shah, the spokeswoman of the local government in Pakistan’s Balochistan, condemned the attack as she offered condolences to the Iranian government and nation.
Describing the attack as a satanic plot to damage brotherly relations between Tehran and Islamabad, she said the time has come for the governments and nations of Iran and Pakistan to send a strong message to terrorist elements.
“Such unscrupulous behavior cannot harm the friendly relations between the two neighboring countries,” the official said.
She the joint trade and development projects of Iran and Pakistan will not be affected by such acts of terrorism and the relations between the two countries will further grow in the future.

The terrorist attack came after Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif inaugurated a marketplace and a power transmission line along their shared border Thursday in a significant move aimed at boosting regional trade and energy cooperation.

Raisi said the project had set the stage for Tehran and Islamabad to expand their economic and energy exchanges.

The transmission line would export 100 megawatts of Iranian electricity to Pakistan’s border province of Baluchistan. The impoverished, natural resources-rich region already imports 100 megawatts of low-cost power from Iran.

“We are fully prepared to further deepen our relations with our neighboring country Pakistan in the energy sector,” the Iranian president said.

The marketplace opened by the two countries Thursday links Iran’s southeastern city of Pishin to Pakistan’s southwestern city of Mand. It is one of the six border markets the two counties are jointly constructing.

“The message of this project is one of security. … Today, both countries see the border as an opportunity and not a threat,” the Iranian leader said, speaking through an official interpreter.

Terrorist attacks in Pakistan’s sparsely populated Balochistan carried out by takfiri terrorists in the adjacent Sistan-Baluchistan province of Iran have long been a source of bilateral tensions.