Former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot and wounded Thursday in an apparent assassination attempt during a protest march in the eastern part of the country, aides said.
The 70-year-old former prime minister, who was ousted in a vote of no confidence in April, was wounded in the leg, according to reports. The shots were said to have been fired at Khan’s convoy as he led the protest march toward the Pakistani capital Islamabad to demand early elections.
“This was an attempt to kill him, to assassinate him,” senior Khan aide Rauf Hasan told the French news agency AFP.
He also said that one gunman had been shot dead and another was in police custody.
Hasan said that Khan was in stable condition after the shooting. Bloomberg quoted Muzzammil Aslam, a spokesman for Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, as saying that the former prime minister was being taken to a hospital in Lahore.
According to members of PTI, four other people were wounded in the incident, but there were no fatalities.
Injured in the assassination attempt on Imran Khan, Senator @FaisalJavedKhan [3] speaks exclusively. #عمران_خان_ہماری_ریڈ_لائن_ہے [4] pic.twitter.com/PyrgQoeTs7 [5]
— PTI (@PTIofficial) November 3, 2022 [6]