ISLAMABAD: Nearly 2,000 Pakistanis have returned home from Iran via Pakistan’s southwestern Balochistan province, Chief Minister Sarfraz Bugti said on Thursday, as provincial authorities remain on high alert amid the conflict in the Middle East.
Iran has been rocked by joint US and Israeli strikes since Feb. 28 that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. It has responded by retaliatory missile attacks targeting American military bases across the Gulf.
The escalation has disrupted air travel, heightened military activity along Iran’s southern coastline and turned strategic locations such as Bandar Abbas, near the Strait of Hormuz that supplies roughly 20 percent of global oil, into flashpoints.
Hundreds of Pakistani students this week fled Iran due to escalating hostilities spilling across key population centers, forcing them to abandon studies and undertake perilous overland journeys back home.
“In view of the ongoing tense situation in Iran, the entire relevant machinery of the Balochistan government is fully on high alert and activated,” Bugti said in an X post on Thursday.
