Last month, Pakistan sent back over 37,000 Afghan families after it opened the Pak-Afghan friendship gate at Chaman on the special request of the Afghan government, reports Dawn news.

Official sources said that the friendship gate opened from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday and 2,977 Afghan citizens stranded in different areas of Balochistan crossed into Afghanistan.

The majority of these Afghan citizens had entered Pakistan without travelling documents.

They crossed into Pakistan through the Chaman border and other entering points between Pakistan and Afghanistan on the basis of Afghan national identity cards only.

"The border had opened for crossing Afghans and Pakistanis into their respective countries," a senior official of the Chaman administration told Dawn news.

He said that so far 488 Pakistanis stranded in Afghanistan had also returned.

The majority of these Pakistani belonged to Khyber Pakhtunkhwa while some are from Balochistan and Punjab, he said.

He said the Pakistanis who arrived from Afghanistan on Saturday would be quarantined at a centre near the Pak-Afghan border.

"Those Pakistanis who are not willing to spend 14 days in quarantine will be sent back to Afghanistan," an official of health department said (IANS)