Pakistani fighter jets targeted alleged hideouts of nationalist separatists in neighbouring Iran, a day after Iranian drones hit Islamist fighters in cross-border drone strikes.

The tit-for-tat strikes by Sunni-majority Pakistan and Shiite-dominated Iran have escalated tensions with regional powers China and Russia calling on both sides to show restraint and not to let the conflict escalate further.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry in Islamabad said on Thursday that the air force targeted the hideouts of separatists inside Iran’s Sistan province in an operation codenamed Marg Barg Saramchar.

Marg means death in Farsi and Saramchar is the term separatist militant organisations used to describe their fighters.

Iranian Mehr news agency said at least seven people were killed in the strikes.

The Pakistani strikes came a day after Iranian authorities said they had targeted a compound in Pakistan’s Balochistan province allegedly being used for the fighters of Jaish al Adl group.

Jaish, a Sunni militant group linked to the Islamic State in Khurasan Province, is believed to have carried out several deadly attacks against Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and border forces in Sistan in recent years.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokesman Mumtaz Baloch said Islamabad had carried out retaliatory strikes to defend its sovereignty after Iran breached the country’s defence.

Pakistan, a nuclear-capable Muslim nation, and Iran believed to have been trying to develop nuclear weapons, have a troubled relationship.

The two nations have been hostile to each other since the Iran-Iraq conflict in the 1980s.

(dpa/NAN)