The Foreign Office (FO) said that India was preventing humanitarian assistance from being sent to Sri Lanka by air, prompting Islamabad to send aid by sea to the south Asian island, where severe flooding and landslides triggered by Cyclone Ditwah have claimed more than 400 lives.
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 a delay of 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.”
A statement issued later by the Pakistan High Commission in Sri Lanka said aircraft were awaiting clearance to fly and accused India of blocking the humanitarian relief operation through “shenanigans”.
The statement said that a “robust relief operation” was initiated on the special directives of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who had instructed the “immediate mobilisation of national resources” to support Sri Lanka during its hour of need.
It said that since Saturday, the Pakistan Army and the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) have been ready for relief operations in Sri Lanka.
“However, for more than two days, Pakistan’s emergency relief mission comprising C-130 aircraft carrying a fully equipped urban search and rescue team, field hospitals, highly trained sniffing dogs and nearly 200 tonnes of life-saving supplies have remained stranded at Noor Khan Air Base in Islamabad due to delaying tactics deployed by India in granting flight clearance to C-130 aircraft.
