Torkham border crossing reopens after a closure of 9 days
The border closure caused huge losses to traders and common people of the two neighbouring countries
Torkham border crossing has been reopened on Friday after a closure of nine days!
Khyber Deputy Commissioner Abdul Nasir Khan said that the Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan opened for pedestrian and vehicular traffic.
“The clearance of trucks is in process and Afghan citizens are entering Afghanistan after clearance and passing immigration processes,” Irshad Khan Mohmamd, assistant commissioner of Khyber district in Pakistan, told AFP.
Thousands including businesses suffered as the road a key lifeline for landlocked Afghanistan, linking the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar to Jalalabad, the main city in Nangarhar, and the route onwards to the capital, Kabul, was closed on September 6 following a clash between the security forces of the two countries, which left a Frontier Corps soldier injured.
A fresh dispute arose over the “illegal construction” of a bunker by the interim Afghanistan government on the Pakistani side of the border.
The decision to reopen the Torkham border crossing was made after Acting Afghanistan Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met the Head of the Pakistan Mission in Kabul, Ubaid Ur Rehman Nizamani.
New armed clashes erupted on Sep 6, when Taliban guards started building a new border outpost near Torkham in violation of mutual agreements.
As reported, several mortar shells were fired from the Afghan side, which landed at the offices of the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA), Customs, and other official workplaces.
According to an official a mortar shell also hit a mosque on the Pakistani side of the border while another landed in the Bacha Mena border village.
The Foreign Office in a statement issued on September 11, said that Islamabad cannot accept the construction of any structures by the interim Afghan government inside its territory since these violate its sovereignty.
