China will fast-track the construction of the Mohmand Dam in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, the South China Morning Post reported on Monday.

The dam is designed for power generation, flood control, irrigation and water supply. It will produce 800 megawatts (MW) of hydropower and provide 1.14 billion litres of drinking water daily to Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's capital.

The state-owned China Energy Engineering Corporation has been working on the Mohmand Hydropower Project since 2019, with its completion scheduled for next year.

A recent report by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said that concrete filling on the dam has begun, marking “a critical construction milestone and a phase of accelerated development for this national flagship project of Pakistan”.

The statement came after India unilaterally suspended the decades-old Indus Waters Treaty with Pakistan following a gunmen attack in Pahalgam, India-administered Kashmir, on April 22 that killed 26 people. New Delhi accuses Pakistan of being involved in the attack. Islamabad strongly denies this.

The military escalation between the two archrivals began on the night of May 6 when New Delhi fired missiles inside Pakistan and Pakistan-administered Kashmir, triggering retaliation on May 10 by Islamabad, which hit 26 Indian military targets inside its eastern neighbour as well as in India-administered Kashmir.

However, the US mediated a ceasefire between the two, which remains in effect, and the two rival militaries decided to continue “confidence-building measures to reduce alertness levels”.

New Delhi, however, has said that Kashmir is a bilateral issue with Islamabad.

However, there have been multiple UN resolutions on Kashmir since 1947, calling for a plebiscite to be held in the disputed territory. None of them has been implemented.