Imran Khan shot in leg in failed ‘assassination’
Former PM and cricket hero is attacked at rally in Pakistan
PAKISTAN’S former prime minister Imran Khan was shot in the leg during a rally yesterday in what he claims was an assassination attempt involving the country’s premier Shehbaz Sharif.
Video shows Mr Khan standing at the front of an open-top container truck during a protest march near Gujranwala to demand snap elections when a gunman fires at the politician with an automatic pistol.
As the sound of bullets filled the air, a shocked Mr Khan, 70, tried to take cover but was hit in the leg.
His team quickly surrounded him as people in the crowd screamed. Footage shows the gunman firing shots at the former international cricketer. A second man tries to wrestle the gun from the would-be assassin, who was attempting to escape.
Mr Khan’s ex-wife, British socialite and screenwriter Jemima Goldsmith, tweeted a picture of the man who wrestled the gunman, hailing him as a ‘hero’. Miss
‘This was an attempt to kill’
Goldsmith, who has two sons with Mr Khan, said: ‘The news we dread. Thank God he’s okay. And thank you from his sons to the heroic man in the crowd who tackled the gunman.’
Video later shows Mr Khan wearing a bandage on his leg, waving to supporters before being helped down from the container truck and seated in a vehicle.
Omar Ayub Khan, a senior leader of the ex-PM’s Tehreek- e-Insaf party, tweeted that Mr Khan underwent surgery at Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Lahore.
Local media reported that he was out of danger. Nine others were wounded in the attack and one of Mr Khan’s supporters was killed. ‘This was an attempt to kill Mr Khan, to assassinate him,’ said senior aide Raoof Hasan.
Mr Khan began his protest march last week as part of a campaign aimed at forcing prime minister Shehbaz Sharif to call an election after Mr Khan was ousted following a no confidence vote.
Mr Khan, a vocal critic of Pakistan’s military for supporting the current regime, accused Mr Sharif, interior minister Rana Sanaullah and Major General Faisal Naseer of being behind the attack.
The gunman was arrested at the scene. Police later released a video of him in custody, allegedly confessing to the shooting and saying that he acted alone.
‘[Mr Khan] was misleading the people, and I couldn’t bear it so I attempted to kill him,’ said the suspect, identified as Faisal Butt by information minister Marriyum Aurangzeb. ‘I tried my best to kill him. I wanted to kill Imran Khan only and no one else.’ It was not clear under what conditions he made his statement.
Born in 1952, the son of a civil engineer, Mr Khan described himself as a shy child who grew up with four sisters in an affluent urban Pashtun family in Lahore, Pakistan’s second-biggest city.
Privately educated in England, he went on to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford University. The sportsman and dedicated party-goer grabbed the cricketing world’s attention in the 1970s as an aggressive fast bowler.
He went on to become one of the world’s best all-rounders and a hero in cricket-mad Pakistan, captaining his team to an unlikely World Cup victory in 1992.
In 1995, he married Jemima Goldsmith, who converted to Islam and learned Urdu. The couple divorced in 2004.
Years later Mr Khan turned to politics. In 2011, he began drawing huge crowds of young Pakistanis disillusioned with endemic corruption, chronic electricity shortages and crises in education and unemployment.
He became prime minister in 2018 but was ousted in a no-confidence vote in April.
Mr Khan has alleged that his ousting was a conspiracy engineered by successor Mr Sharif and the United States – claims both parties have denied.