2 mortar shells fired from Afghanistan territory: FO

Published January 29, 2020
No casualties have been reported. — Photo provided by Naveed Siddiqui
No casualties have been reported. — Photo provided by Naveed Siddiqui

Two mortar shells were fired into Pakistan from the Afghanistan territory, said Foreign Office spokesperson Aisha Farooqui on Wednesday. No casualties were reported.

Following the incident, the Torkham border gate was closed off for security reasons, she added.

"The matter is being coordinated with Afghan authorities," Farooqui said in a statement, adding that the gate is likely to be opened soon.

"Some mortars were fired from across the border in Afghanistan and landed inside Pakistan. They caused some damage to vehicles," Mahmood Aslam Wazir, deputy district commissioner of the area on the Pakistani side, told Reuters.

An Afghan official denied that Afghan forces had fired into Pakistan.

"In the past, Pakistan has played the same game whenever they want to close the Torkham crossing," Attaullah Khogyani, spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar province, told Reuters.

Prime Minister Imran Khan had last year decided to keep the Torkham border crossing open for 24 hours in order to facilitate trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Despite measures to improve ties, however, there have been several incidents of border skirmishes between the Afghanistan and Pakistan forces.

In October last year, 11 people were injured in a border skirmish between the Pakistan and Afghanistan forces after the latter fired mortars and heavy machine guns in Narai district of Kunar province, targeting civilian population in the Arandu village.

According to Abdul Ghani Musamem, a government official in Afghanistan’s Kunar province, the clashes had erupted when Afghan troops used force to stop the construction of a border installation.

Pakistan Army is currently fencing the border and building forts for paramilitary forces along the porous Pak-Afghan border to check illegal cross-border movement of people.

Opinion

Editorial

Anti-women state
Updated 25 Nov, 2024

Anti-women state

GLOBALLY, women are tormented by the worst tools of exploitation: rape, sexual abuse, GBV, IPV, and more are among...
IT sector concerns
25 Nov, 2024

IT sector concerns

PRIME Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s ambitious plan to increase Pakistan’s IT exports from $3.2bn to $25bn in the ...
Israel’s war crimes
25 Nov, 2024

Israel’s war crimes

WHILE some powerful states are shielding Israel from censure, the court of global opinion is quite clear: there is...
Short-changed?
Updated 24 Nov, 2024

Short-changed?

As nations continue to argue, the international community must recognise that climate finance is not merely about numbers.
Overblown ‘threat’
24 Nov, 2024

Overblown ‘threat’

ON the eve of the PTI’s ‘do or die’ protest in the federal capital, there seemed to be little evidence of the...
Exclusive politics
24 Nov, 2024

Exclusive politics

THERE has been a gradual erasure of the voices of most marginalised groups from Pakistan’s mainstream political...