QUETTA: Pakistan opened its border with Afghanistan at Chaman on Saturday to allow return of Afghans to their country.

Last month, Pakistan sent back over 37,000 Afghan families after it opened the Pak-Afghan friendship gate at Chaman on the special request of the Afghan government.

Official sources said that the friendship gate opened from 8am to 5pm and 2,977 Afghan citizens stranded in different areas of Balochistan crossed into Afghanistan.

Majority of these Afghan citizens had entered Pakistan without travelling documents.

Majority of returnees had entered Pakistan without travel documents

They crossed into Pakistan through the Chaman border and other entering points between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the basis of Afghan national identity cards only.

“The border had opened for crossing Afghans and Pakistanis into their respective countries,” a senior official of the Chaman administration, Zakaullah Durrani, told Dawn over phone.

He said that so far 488 Pakistanis stranded in Afghanistan had also returned.

Majority of these Pakistani belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while some of them belong to Balochistan and Punjab, he said.

He said that these Pakistanis had been sent to their respective provinces after medical check-up by health officials at the border.

He said that Pakistanis who arrived from Afghanistan on Saturday would be quarantined in the tent village quarantine centre established at Killi Faizo close to the Pak-Afghan border.

“Those Pakistanis who are not willing to spend 14 days in quarantine will be sent back to Afghanistan,” an official of health department said, adding that quarantine was mandatory for all those Pakistanis who were coming from Afghanistan according to SOPs issued by the government of Pakistan.

Mr Durrani said that 488 Pakistanis were allowed to go home after completing the 14-day quarantine period.

Published in Dawn, May 10th, 2020