On Thursday, an armed man opened fire on a container ship carrying former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, slightly wounding him and several of his supporters. A party spokesman stated that Khan was shot in the leg and was not seriously injured, while an aide to Imran Khan said that one of the convoy’s attackers was killed and another was arrested.
“A man opened fire with automatic weapons, several people were injured. Imran Khan was also wounded,” party spokesman Asad Omar told Reuters. Khan was taken to the hospital.
Khan was leading a protest march towards Islamabad demanding early elections when his column came under fire.
Al-Arabiya and Al-Hadas correspondent in Pakistan said that Imran Khan’s injury was minor and he was in stable condition, noting that the Justice Party was talking about an assassination attempt on Imran Khan and calling his supporters to demonstrate.
“His condition is stable,” Rauf Hassan, Khan’s top aide, told AFP, adding that “it was an attempt to kill him, kill him.”
Khan was later seen with a bandage on his leg. He was transferred to another vehicle from the container ship, where he was found unharmed. According to the announcement, some Exemplar Party supporters were also injured.
The attack comes less than a week after Khan, along with thousands of his supporters, began marching from Lahore, the capital of the Punjab province.
Since his ouster in a parliamentary vote of no confidence in April, Khan has argued that his ouster was a conspiracy orchestrated by his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, and the United States—accusations that both the new prime minister and Washington denied.
Khan, a 70-year-old former cricketer, led a protest march towards Islamabad demanding early elections.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif condemned the shooting incident and ordered the interior minister to immediately launch an investigation.
