Former Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has been shot at a protest march in what his supporters are saying was an assassination attempt.
Khan was reportedly shot in the leg after a guman opened fire while he was giving a speech to a large crowd of supporters at a rally in Wazirabad in the nation’s Punjab Province in the past hour. Members of Khan’s PTI party told the BBC another four people were hurt but no-one was killed.
According to a Sky News producer and reporter, who were at the scene, 70-year-old Khan was rushed away from the scene immediately following gunshots and screams and Sky then spoke to his supporters who said he had survived the assassination attempt. “This was an attempt to kill him, to assassinate him,” one senior aide told AFP.
The Sky News reporter, Cordelia Lynch, said the injured were taken to ambulances amidst “a lot of panic,” adding: “This was the worst case scenario – what so many people were concerned about was that this peaceful protest had the potential to turn violent.”
Khan, a former Pakistan cricket captain, was Prime Minister from 2018 to 2022 before becoming the nation’s first Prime Minister to be removed from office via a no confidence vote, which came following a severe economic downturn and after he fell out with the country’s powerful army and intelligence services.
He has since insisted that his ousting was unconstitutional and has been holding a set of rallies in the country, most recently a six-day protest event from Lahore to Islamabad in his drive to bring early elections, during which today’s assassination attempt took place. Last month, Pakistan’s election commission disqualified Khan from holding public office, which he described as “politically motivated.”
The news comes four months after former Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot and killed while giving a speech.
Max Goldbart
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