JAMMU: Pakistani authorities on Friday suspended cross-LoC bus service between J&K's Poonch and Rawlakote in PoK amid heightened tensions over the killing of soldiers along the de-facto India-Pakistan border.
It comes a day after they had disallowed 60 trucks involved in trade along the LoC from crossing over to their side at Chakkan-da-Bagh in Poonch, where two Indian soldiers were killed in a raid earlier this week in Krishna Ghati Sector. Firing along the sector was again reported on Thursday.
"I talked to my counterparts in Pakistan and they told me that there would be no cross-LoC bus service on Monday," Poonch district industrial commissioner Abdul Hamid Sheikh told TOI. "No timeframe was conveyed to me for resuming the cross-LoC trade and bus service." But he said they assured him that it would be resuming as the situation along the LoC normalizes.
Sheikh said most trucks stopped on Thursday were carrying perishable commodities like bananas and vegetables.
The weekly bus service was inaugurated in June 2006 amid much fanfare as part of the confidence building measures. Earlier, Srinagar-Muzaffarabad bus services was inaugurated a month earlier followed by trade along the LoC at separate places in 2008.
Src: ToI
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