Pakistan reopens Torkham border-crossing

JALALABAD (PAN on Sunday reopened the Torkham border-crossing that was closed a day earlier for vehicular traffic and travellers, officials said.

Pakistani guards allowed travellers on foot to cross the frontier this morning, a border police officer, Mohammad Ayub Hussainkhel, told Pajhwok Afghan News.

On Saturday, the Pakistani guards said the border-crossing had been closed in compliance with directives from the federal government.

Hussainkhel said although people were crossing the Durand Line, trucks and containers remained stuck.

According to a Torkham-based Pakistani official, the border will be closed later in the day in view of a planned protest by political activists against US drone strikes.

Shopkeeper Khaksar said the border gate was reopened at 5.00pm on Saturday before being closed again. “At night, people were allowed to enter Afghanistan, but not Pakistan.”

Led by cricketer-turned politician Imran Khan, thousands of people on Saturday closed the main road in Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, used by NATO supply trucks.

Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf (PTI) party and its coalition partners in the provincial government sponsored the protest, supported by the rightwing Jamaat-i-Islami (JI) and Awami Jamhoori Ittehad (AJIP).

Around 10,000 activists of the political parties converged on the Ring Road in Peshawar from different parts of the country, according to organisers. The demonstrators called for a halt to drone strikes, chanting “Down with America”.

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