It was the third time in recent weeks that Pakistan had accused Iranian law enforcement officers of outright murder of Pakistani citizens.
The problem appears to be the Wild West environment that prevails along the Iran-Pakistan border, where drug trafficking is a big business and where Baluchi ethnics live on both sides of a border they view as unwanted interference in the conduct of their lives.
The latest incident erupted last Thursday. Abdul Rehman Dashti, the deputy commissioner of the Gwadar district of Pakistan, told reporters that a group of villagers had gone to Chabahar in Iran to sell their cattle because they could get a better price in Iran.
The deputy commissioner said that while the men were returning home they were intercepted by Iranian police who fired on them, killing six villagers and wounding another two.
He did not say how he obtained this information, but it appeared that at least one other villager evaded the Iranian police and returned to Pakistan to report the shooting incident.
The deputy commissioner complained that Iran was refusing to return the bodies of the dead or the two wounded men.
The next day, the Iranian border guard force for Sistan va Baluchestan province denied flatly that any innocent Pakistani citizens had been fired on. A statement blamed the “foreign media” for the false report being carried by news outlets, ignoring the fact that a deputy commissioner and other Pakistani officials were the ones accusing Iran.
The Iranian border guard statement said guards had come across a band of “drug smugglers and armed bandits” and ordered them to surrender. The statement said the bandits then opened fire on the border guards. The statement said a 90-minute gun battle ensured in which six bandits were killed and no border guards were killed or injured. It said the guards confiscated 1,042 kilos of opium and hashish from the smugglers.
The statement also flatly denied that the border guards had shot the smugglers inside Pakistan and said the entire shootout was on Iranian territory. But no Pakistani official ever asserted the shooting took place inside Pakistan.
Deputy Commissioner Dashti later said there was some confusion over the nationality of the dead men. They all lived along the border, which they largely ignored. One villager said four of the dead had Iranian nationality while the other two held Pakistani nationality. Dashti said the identities had not yet been sorted out.
On January 2, Pakistan said it had arrested three Iranian border guards who had chased a Pakistan vehicle across the border, penetrating three kilometers deep into Pakistan where they fired on the vehicle, killing one youth and wounding his brother. The Iranian police were charged with murder but freed several days later when the father of the dead youth agreed to accept blood money payments in lieu of prosecution.
In December, several Pakistani fishermen were killed when an Iranian coast guard boat fired on them for allegedly fishing illegally. Pakistan said the Iranians opened fire with no warning.