At least one police officer was killed and dozens of people injured in Pakistan as supporters of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan clashed with security forces outside the capital Islamabad on Monday, officials and Khan’s party said.
Authorities have enforced a security lockdown for the last two days after Khan called for a march on parliament for a sit-in demonstration to demand his release, while highways into the city have been barricaded.
One police officer was shot and killed, at least 119 others were injured, and 22 police vehicles were torched in clashes just outside Islamabad and elsewhere in the Punjab province, provincial police chief Usman Anwar said. Two officers were in critical condition, he said.
Khan’s party said scores of its workers were also hurt.
It said the jailed leader’s third wife, Bushra Bibi, and a key aide, Ali Amin Gandapur, who is the chief minister of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, were leading a march that arrived just outside Islamabad on Sunday night.
The government has used shipping containers to block major roads and streets in Islamabad, with patrols of police and paramilitary personnel in riot gear.
Officials and witnesses said all public transport between cities and terminals had also been shut down in the eastern province to keep away the protesters,
Provincial Information Minister Uzma Bukhari said about 80 of Khan’s supporters had been arrested.
Defence Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif told local Geo News TV that the government sought talks with leaders of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party to calm down the situation. “It was a sincere attempt I must say but it didn’t yield any results,” he said.
BULLET FOR BULLET
Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi said security forces showed “extreme restraint” in confronting the protesters, some of whom he said had fired live rounds, while police only used rubber bullets and fired teargas canisters.
“It is easy to respond a bullet with a bullet,” he said.
But Khan’s party accused the government of using excessive violence to block the protesters and said hundreds of workers and leaders had been arrested.
“They are even firing live bullets,” one of Khan’s aides, Shaukat Yousafzai, told Geo News.
Reuters TV and local TV footage showed police firing teargas canisters at Khan’s supporters, who were pelting them with stones and bricks.
The videos showed vehicles and trees ablaze along the main march just outside Islamabad as the protesters at some places pushed shipment containers to make their way.
The capital has bolstered security for Monday’s arrival of the president of Belarus, Aleksandr Lukashenko for a three day visit, a Pakistan prime minister office statement said.
Gatherings in Islamabad have been banned, while all schools in the capital and the adjacent city of Rawalpindi were to remain closed on Monday and Tuesday, the authorities said,
The protest march, which Khan has described as the “final call”, is one of many his party had held to seek his release since he was jailed in August last year. The party’s most recent protest in Islamabad, early in October, turned violent.
Voted out of power by parliament in 2022 after he fell out with Pakistan’s powerful military, Khan faces charges ranging from corruption to instigation of violence, all of which he and his party deny.
(With Inputs from Reuters)
