Reuters : The Torkham border crossing between Afghanistan and Pakistan has re-opened after a closure of nine days following a shooting between guards on both sides, Khyber Deputy Commissioner Abdul Nasir Khan said on Friday.
Thousands of travellers and hundreds of trucks laden with goods were stranded last week by the closure of the Torkham border crossing, at the western end of the fabled Khyber Pass.
“It’s opened for pedestrian and vehicular traffic,” Khan told Reuters.
A security official in Torkham said talks between the two sides had resolved the issue that sparked the clashes.
Spokespersons for Pakistan’s foreign ministry and authorities in Afghanistan’s eastern province of Nangarhar also confirmed the re-opening.
The road is 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.
“The border closure was causing huge losses to traders and common people of the two neighbouring countries,” said Ziaul Haq Sarhadi, director of the Pakistan-Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Among dozens of families braving the heat and humidity in a bid to return home was an Afghan refugee, Mohammad Ismail, who had spent a week in a makeshift shelter in Peshawar with his wife and four children, waiting for the border to open.
Muhammad Ismail, 40, sits with his family while they are waiting to cross main Afghanistan-Pakistan land border crossing, in Torkham, Pakistan September 15, 2023. — Reuters
“They’re not letting us go back,” Ismail told a Reuters photographer, saying that officials were not acknowledging his legal documents, although he had pleaded with them to let the family cross over and seek medical assistance.
“All my children have fallen sick,” he added.
The refugee family has been in Pakistan for the last three years.
Dozens more families in the queue also complained of very slow processing of documents. Lining the route nearby were hundreds of vehicles carrying perishable fruits, vegetables and other items.
