The Foreign Office (FO) said on Tuesday that India was preventing humanitarian assistance from being sent to Sri Lanka, which has reported severe flooding and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah.
In a post on X, the FO said: “India continues to block humanitarian assistance from Pakistan to Sri Lanka. The special aircraft carrying Pakistan’s humanitarian assistance to Sri Lanka continues to face delay for over 60 hours now awaiting flight clearance from India.
“The partial flight clearance issued by India last night, after 48 hours, was operationally impractical: time-bound for just a few hours and without validity for the return flight, severely hindering this urgent relief mission for the brotherly people of Sri Lanka,” it said.
The development comes a day after diplomatic sources told Dawn that Pakistan had received permission from India to use its airspace for humanitarian aid flights to Sri Lanka to provide flood relief.
It should be mentioned that India and Pakistan have closed their airspaces to each other’s aircraft since tensions between them escalated in April in the wake of an attack in India-occupied Kashmir’s Pahalgam that killed 26 people and the subsequent four-day conflict. In October, Islamabad extended the airspace ban until November 24.
More to follow
