Pakistan's main border crossing with Afghanistan remained shut on September 8, stranding thousands of civilians and halting hundreds of vehicles carrying goods between the two countries.
Islamabad closed the Torkham border crossing following a clash with Taliban forces three days earlier.
The move has left thousands of civilians, mostly Afghans, waiting to cross and largely stalled trade between the countries as hundreds of trucks, some carrying perishable goods such as fruits and vegetables, wait on both sides of the Torkham crossing.
"We are trapped here," said Nabiullah, an Afghan man returning to his country after receiving medical treatment in the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar.
"We are in trouble and waiting for the border crossing to reopen," he told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal.
Radio Azadi has learned that a Taliban border guard and a civilian were killed in the shooting.
Taliban officials in the eastern Afghan province of Nangarhar, where Torkham is located, say high-level talks continue with Pakistan to reopen the crossing. Pakistani officials have not commented on the issue.
In Landi Kotal, a Pakistani town near Torkham, stranded Afghans said the closure is preventing the repatriation of two dead bodies to Afghanistan for burial.
"People here are facing great difficulties," Imran, one of the stranded Afghans, told Radio Azadi.
"There are many Afghan patients, women and children here.”
The September 6 clash followed a large incursion of Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) militants into the remote northwestern Pakistani district of Chitral, which borders eastern Afghanistan some 400 kilometers north of Torkham.
Relations between erstwhile allies Pakistan and Afghanistan’s Islamist Taliban rulers have rapidly deteriorated after the TTP ended a cease-fire with Islamabad last November. The TTP, an ideological and organizational ally of the Taliban, has been bolstered by the return of the militants to power in Afghanistan two years ago.
"Deteriorating political relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan are also resulting in declining trade and economic ties between them," Abdul Naseer Rashtia, the head of an Afghan trading association, told Radio Azadi.
“This causes Afghan investors to suffer greatly and badly affects their trade and transit," he added.
Torkham and other border crossings between the two neighbors have been frequently closed because of clashes or political disagreements over the past two decades.
Islamabad has fenced most of its more than 2,500-kilometer border with Afghanistan. Closing the border with its landlocked neighbor remains a significant lever to pressure Kabul during crises.