Titrinote (Pakistan): Pakistani police fired tear gas and shots to disperse hundreds of villagers trying to approach a border crossing with India alongside Pakistan-occupied-Kashmir after it was opened to facilitate earthquake relief efforts.
Villagers shouted 'Let people cross' and 'What we want is freedom' as they approached the Line of Control.
"We want an independent Kashmir. We don't respect this border," said one of the protesters, Azhar Mushtaq.
Some Kashmiri separatists, who want to see a united Kashmir independent of both Pakistan and India, have objected to the opening, saying it would lead to the line becoming a formal border, and the permanent division of Kashmir.
Shortly before the protest, Indian and Pakistani military officials opened the disputed border in a largely symbolic gesture to help survivors of the October 8 earthquake that killed more than 73,000 people in PoK and about 1,300 in India.
Relief from the Indian side is already being sent to Pakistan.
"This is a historical event. There have been physical and mental barriers for 60 years that are now crumbling," said a Jammu commissioner B.R. Sharma.
More points to open soon
The two sides had agreed to open five points on the heavily militarised Line of Control dividing Kashmir.
But on Saturday, India said only one of the five points, Chakan da Bagh opposite Titrinote in Poonch district, would be operational on Monday.
Pakistani officials said only relief goods would be crossing the line on Monday as paperwork had delayed hoped-for reunions of divided families.
However Pakistani villagers said they didn't need aid from India. They just wanted to see relatives on the other side.
"We want the Pakistan and Indian governments to ease restrictions to let people meet," Pakistani villager Sardar Abdul Hafiz said shortly before the protest.
He was one of several hundred people, many from divided families, watching the border opening.
"We don't need sugar, flour or rice or anything else. We just want to see our dear ones," he said.
While the Pakistani side suffered heavier quake damage than the Indian side, the area where the border was opened is on the southern edge of the disaster zone.
The Indian Army said a relief camp at the newly opened border point, was ready to host 100 people and a helipad had been restored to evacuate any emergency patients.
Too little too late?
But aid officials warn that with winter fast approaching, time is running out for up to three million people left homeless by the quake in Pakistan, some of whom remain without help high in the mountains while temperatures tumble.
Aid workers say opening a border crossing into Pakistan's hard-hit Neelum Valley, about 80 km to the north, would be most significant in terms of aid as that area is still cut off by landslides.
India says it will open a route into the Neelum Valley from Tithwal to Nauseri on the Pakistani side on Thursday.
Pakistan however feels that a bridge must be laid across the Neelum river before relief goods can come in.
But with roads swept away by landslides, any aid from the Indian side would still have to be moved by helicopter to communities outside the immediate area.
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