ISLAMABAD, Sept 8: Pakistan has reopened supply lines to Nato forces in Afghanistan, after the road through the Khyber Pass was blocked on Saturday, days after a raid by US commandos on a Pakistani village.

Adviser to Prime Minister on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik said on Monday that the road was unblocked after a few hours, and traffic had only been halted for security reasons, although the country’s defence minister had earlier said the action was taken in response to violations of Pakistani territory by Nato forces.

“There was a suspension for a few hours due to security reasons but later, supplies to Afghanistan were resumed after clearing the road,” Malik told Reuters.

Militants have been attacking trucks in the Khyber Pass, on the way to Torkham, the main crossing point on the Pakistani-Afghan border near Peshawar.

But the move to stop tankers carrying fuel came after the new government expressed outrage over the killing of 20 people, including women and children, during a US commando raid on a remote border village in Pakistani tribal lands on Sept 3.

Defence Minister Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar told DawnNews TV on Saturday that the fuel supply route through Torkham had been blocked “to tell how serious we are”.

While the brief interruption to fuel supplies demonstrated the West’s dependence on Pakistani cooperation to keep troops in landlocked Afghanistan supplied, Pakistan’s leverage is limited.

The government gets paid by the United States for expenditure and logistical support in fighting militancy in the region, and needs billions of dollars of foreign assistance to stave off a looming balance of payments crisis.

Most fuel and other supplies for US-led forces in Afghanistan are trucked through Pakistan, crossing the border at two points: Torkham and Chaman, to the southwest.

The Chaman crossing, used to supply foreign forces in southern Afghanistan, was operating normally on Saturday.—Reuters