TEHRAN – Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement on Thursday afternoon saying it condemns Pakistan’s “unbalanced” and “unacceptable” move in making drone attacks on the border area.

Pakistan made drone attacks on a border village inside Iran on Thursday morning, killing nine people, all Pakistani citizens.

Alireza Marhamati, the deputy governor of Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province, said about 4:00 am local time three drones attacked a border village in the Saravan region which led to destruction of 4 homes and 10 deaths. The deputy governor said all those killed are Pakistani nationals. Earlier, the Iranian interior minister said the attack had happened 3 to 4 kilometers from the border with Pakistan.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran, while being committed to the policy of good neighborliness and brotherhood between the two nations and two governments of Iran and Pakistan, does not allow foes to strain good and brotherly relations between the two countries,” the Foreign Ministry said in part of its statement.

The ministry went on to say that Iran considers “the security of the people and territorial integrity of the country as its red line and seriously expects the friendly and brotherly government of Pakistan to fulfill its commitment to prevent terrorist groups” to use "Pakistan’s soil" as their bases.

Pakistan's drone raids on the border village took place after Iran attacked the headquarters of Jaish ul-Adl, an Iranian terrorist group, in Pakistan's border province of Balochistan on Tuesday night with drones and missiles. 

The ministry said the border post of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) in the province of Sistan-Baluchestan attacked Jaish ul-Adl headquarters on Tuesday as it was observing a terrorist group was heading toward Iran to carry out another terrorist attack like the one that happened in the border city of Rask in mid-December last year in which 11 Iranian police officers were killed.

“The preemptive operation against this terrorist group… took place in the heights of the region and kilometers away from residential areas,” the statement added.

The ministry said this is “part of the inherent duty of Iran’s border guards in countering any imminent terrorist threat against the citizens of the country.”

At the end, the Iranian Foreign Ministry insisted that it “makes a distinction between the friendly and brotherly country of Pakistan and the armed terrorist groups and is always committed to its policy of neighborliness and doesn’t allow the foes and their terrorist mercenaries to strain this relationship especially at a time that the Zionist regime’s genocide and crimes (against the people of Palestine in Gaza) are the foremost issue of the Islamic world.”