IAF pilot Abhinandan returns home

Wagah (India) - Abhinandan was shot down on Wednesday while flying a MiG-21 fighter jet that crashed in Pakistani territory.

Pakistan handed a captured Indian pilot back to his country on Friday as the nuclear-armed neighbours scaled back their confrontation, at least temporarily.
Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman walked across the border near the town of Wagah just before 9pm, Indian time. Officials said he would be taken for medical checks.
Abhinandan was shot down on Wednesday while flying a MiG-21 fighter jet that crashed in Pakistani territory after a dogfight with a Pakistani JF-17.
World powers have urged restraint from the two nations, as tensions escalated following a suicide car bombing that killed at least 40 Indian paramilitary police in Indian-controlled Kashmir on February 14.
Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi said earlier on Friday the pilot would be released "as a gesture of peace and to de-escalate matters".
Before the pilot was released, Pakistani television stations broadcast video of him, looking cleaned up, thanking the Pakistani army for treating him well.
"The Pakistani army is a very professional service," he said.
Throughout the day, crowds on the Indian side thronged the road to the crossing, shouting nationalist slogans and waving Indian flags.
"Pakistan is releasing our pilot, I thank them for that," said Kulwant Singh, who has run a food stall at the crossing for 20 years.
"War can never be good. War is bad for business, war is bad for our soldiers." There was some firing along the contested border dividing Kashmir on Friday, according to a spokesman for India's defence ministry, but the hostilities were well short of previous days.
Pakistan reopened some airports on Friday, after easing airspace restrictions that had disrupted flights between Asia and Europe for several days during the conflict. Relations between the two countries, however, remain strained.

• India