Home ›› 05 Nov 2022 ›› Front
Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan on Friday accused the current premier Shehbaz Sharif, interior minister Rana Sanaullah and a senior army commander of plotting a botched assassination attempt that left him wounded.
“These three decided to kill me,” Khan told reporters in Lahore in his first public appearance since he was rushed to hospital after Thursday’s attack.
The PTI Chairman urged Chief of Army Staff (COAS) General Qamar Javed Bajwa to act now to prevent the country from heading down the path of destruction.
“If you don’t take action against black sheep. the nation [...] will start breaking apart,” he said, urging him to put the country first.
“If the military could unite the country then east Pakistan would not have broken away. Only political parties unite countries, the military helps.”
In an address to the nation from Shaukat Khanum hospital, he said that “we didn’t learn from history”.
“When I first set out for the march, I was told that they will kill me. At first, I wondered if they would really hurt the nation for their petty interests.
“I ask the nation today, do we have to stay like this, or do we have to change our fate and become free? Sacrifices are needed for this.”
PTI chief Imran Khan has vowed to take to the streets once again after recovering from the attack on his life. He asserted that he did not care about his life and refused to remain under the “slavery of these thieves”.
“As soon as I get well, I will give the call for the Islamabad and come out onto the streets,” he said, adding that Pakistan “wasn’t made for slavery”.
Meanwhile, Imran Khan was recovering in hospital Friday after an assassination attempt that the government blamed on religious extremism.
The attack on his convoy, apparently by a lone gunman, killed one man and wounded at least 10, significantly raising the stakes in a political crisis that has gripped the South Asian nation since Khan’s ousting in April.
Khan “was stable and he was doing fine” after being shot in the leg, his doctor Faisal Sultan told AFP Friday from a hospital in the eastern city of Lahore.
He was expected to address his supporters and the media outside the hospital late Friday afternoon.
The 70-year-old former international cricket star had been leading a campaign convoy of thousands since last week from Lahore to the capital Islamabad when he was attacked.
He was looking out at the crowd when a gunman sprayed pistol fire at his modified container truck as it slowly inched through a thick crowd in Wazirabad, around 170 kilometres (105 miles) east of Islamabad.
“Everyone who was standing in the very front row got hit,” former information minister Fawad Chaudhry, who was standing behind Khan, told AFP.
The gunman was tackled by a supporter, preventing more injuries, he added.
A suspect was taken into police custody and a video which appears to be a confession to police was leaked to the media, in which he says Khan was “misleading the public”.
He adds that he was angry with the noisy procession for interrupting the call to prayer that summons Muslims to the mosque five times a day.
The government’s interior minister Rana Sanaullah said the attack was “a very clear case of religious extremism”.
“The allegations made by the accused in the video are very alarming and very terrifying,” he said at a press conference.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party however, condemned what it called a “conspiracy”, accusing the government and a major general in the military of masterminding the attack.
