PESHAWAR, Oct 20: The telecommunication links between Peshawar and adjoining cities remained suspended with rest of the country for about an hour as some miscreants cut the optic fibre cable at Hakeemabad near Nowshera on Sunday.

The cable was cut at about 4.40pm, following which the subscribers of Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited and cellular phone companies remained disconnected from rest of the country.

The PTCL dispatched a team of technicians for repairing the cable, which continued to work over it at the time of filing this report.

An official at the PTCL Central Exchange here told Dawn that they had routed telephone calls of local subscribers to Rawalpindi, Karachi and other cities through other regions of the NWFP and Balochistan. At about 6.00pm the service with other cities, he said, was restored through other telecommunication regions, including D.I.Khan and Quetta.

However, the cellular phone services of some of the companies could not be restored, he further said.

The official claimed that as the optic fibre cable was very sophisticated its repairing would take some time.

The suspension of cellular phone services and disconnection with other cities gave birth to various rumours and people continued calling the offices of newspapers, asking whether the newly-elected national and provincial assemblies had been dissolved by the military government.