A gunman opened fire at a protest march in Pakistan and shot former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in the leg, officials said, the latest attack on a Pakistani leader, though the gunman’s identity and motive were not released without delay.
Pakistani police said the attack took place in the Wazirabad district of eastern Punjab province, where Khan’s vehicle was part of a convoy carrying a giant organization of supporters demonstrating for early elections, the Associated Press reported. April.
Authorities told French AFP the attack was an “attempt to kill” Khan.
Several other people were wounded in the attack, while Khan was taken to hospital after a guy opened fire with an automatic weapon, according to party official Asad Umar, several media outlets reported.
A male suspect, who not without delay identified, arrested, Pakistan’s Geo TV reported.
Khan staged a protest march from the eastern city of Lahore to the capital Islamabad last week, not easy for the country to hold timely elections after he was sacked from his job in April after wasting a no-confidence vote. He also blamed the US and Pakistan’s new Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif for carrying out an alleged plot to capture the force; both Sharif and the United States have denied the allegations. Thursday’s assassination attempt comes 15 years after a teenage suicide bomber killed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, who was campaigning for her third term, after she was previously kicked out of the force following her election as prime minister in the 1990s. Former Punjab governor Salman Taseer was shot dead by one of his bodyguards in 2011, who allegedly fired because Taseer opposed Pakistan’s blasphemy law, the BBC reported. Array brought to a police guard. In 1988, former Pakistani President Zia ul-Haq and 10 of his army generals were killed in a plane crash, which was later decided to be probably an act of sabotage using explosivesArray
The assassination attempt is the latest attack on a senior official in recent months. In July, a gunman killed former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe while he was campaigning for a party candidate in Nara, Japan, using a homemade weapon (political violence is rare in Japan, where firearms are banned). Last week, a man stormed the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif. ), attacked her husband Paul Pelosi, hoping to take the president hostage, shouting “Where’s Nancy?”Political violence and violent threats have peaked in the United States in recent months, following the Jan. 6 uprising, when rioters stormed the Capitol to deny that Pelosi and former Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the 2020 election, shouting “hang Mike Pence. “
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot and wounded in a protest march (BBC)
Official: Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan wounded with gunshot (Associated Press)