26 Kashmiris travel by trans-LoC Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus

MIRPUR: As many as five residents of Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK) left for Srinagar while two Kashmiris from the Indian-Occupied Kashmir crossed over into this side of the Line of Control (LoC), AJK, by the trans-LoC bus operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad on Monday, official sources said.
A total of 19 people from both sides, the AJK and the Indian-Occupied Kashmir, also crossed sides by the bus at the LoC in the Chakothi-Uri Sector on the ancient Muzaffarabad-Srinagar Road.
Official sources told the APP on Monday evening that five AJK residents, including four women, left for Srinagar by the weekly bus. They reached the LoC moving point at the Chakothi-Uri sector and then walked through the ancient Peace Bridge for their onward journey to Srinagar to meet their relatives separated in 1947.
The sources said that eight Kashmiris from the Occupied Kashmir, who had come to the AJK, also returned to Srinagar after completing their stay with their relatives living in the AJK. They included three women and a child.
Meanwhile, two residents of Occupied Kashmir crossed to this side of the LoC to meet their relatives, sources said. As many as 11 AJK residents, including three women, who had gone to Srinagar on a previous bus trip, also returned to their homes.
The Karvan-e-Aman bus service has helped thousands of divided Kashmiri families, living on either sides of the LoC, to meet each other after India and Pakistan agreed to allow the divided families to travel on permits instead of international passports to meet each other since the first bus was flagged off by the then Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, and the then AJK prime minister, Sardar Sikander Hayat Khan, on April 7, 2005.