A Pakistani army officer Major Ali Jawad Changezi died on Tuesday after being shot by Afghan forces in a border clash, Pakistan's military said, a development likely to ratchet up tension between the neighbours who sources said were beefing up troop numbers on either side. The main gates at Torkham, the most frequented official border crossing at the end of the Khyber Pass, stayed closed for a third day, leaving thousands stranded on either side.
-- Army major embraces martyrdom after being shot by Afghan forces
Firing between Pakistani and Afghan forces first broke out on Sunday at the crossing, about 45 km (28 miles) west of Peshawar, over the construction of a new border post on the Pakistani side. Pakistan's army chief attended funeral prayers on Tuesday for Major Jawad Ali Changezi, who was among nine Pakistani and six Afghan troops wounded in the fighting, security officials said.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's office and the Pakistani military's press wing also confirmed Changezi's death. One Afghan soldier was killed, Afghan officials had claimed on Monday. Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have been strained for months. "This gate (is) considered essential to check and verify documentation of all border crossers," Lieutenant General Asim Bajwa, the chief of ISPR, said on social media website Twitter on Monday.
Afghanistan summoned the Pakistani ambassador on Tuesday to register its protest at the violence, Afghanistan's foreign ministry said. Pakistan had similarly summoned the Afghan charge d'affaires in Islamabad on Monday, the Pakistani foreign office said. The Pakistani army had moved heavy weaponry and additional troops to the Afghan border on Monday night, said Pakistani security officials, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
On Monday, an Afghan border police commander also confirmed that reinforcements had been deployed to the Afghan side of the border. In Afghanistan's eastern city of Jalalabad, more than a thousand mourners attended funeral prayers on Tuesday for the dead Afghan soldier. The Pakistan-Afghanistan border has long been porous and disputed. Afghanistan has blocked repeated attempts by Pakistan to build a fence on sections of the roughly 2,200-km (1,370-mile) -long frontier, rejecting the contours of the boundary.-Reuters
INP adds: Firing by Afghan forces was aimed at disrupting the construction of a gate well inside Pakistani territory at the border so that terrorists and illegal Afghans could enter Pakistan without any hindrance. Afghan troops at the border have been receiving heavy money from those crossing into Pakistan without valid documents. The construction of the gate would stop the huge source of income for the border Afghan troops. AFP adds: Afghan and Pakistani forces clashed in an escalation of tensions between the neighbouring countries, killing at least three people and forcing the closure of the main border crossing, officials said Tuesday.
The fighting erupted along the Torkham border on Sunday night and continued erratically over the next two days. "The firing continued till 7:00 am (Tuesday). The border is now closed until the tension subsides," he told AFP. A Pakistani military officer was also killed and 18 others, many of them civilians, were wounded, security officials in Peshawar said.
The Pakistani military justified the construction of the gate at Torkham, saying "terrorists" were using the busy crossing point. "In order to check movement of terrorists through Torkham, Pakistan is constructing a gate on (our) own side of the border as a necessity to check unwanted and illegal movement," the military said in a statement on Monday. Torkham is one of the major crossings between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of trucks and thousands of people cross the border daily through the Khyber Pass. The border was closed over similar clashes last month, but was reopened after an understanding was reached between the two countries.