EX-Pakistan PM Imran Khan Wounded in Assassination Attempt (VIDEO)

Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan was shot and injured in a clear assassination attempt on Thursday.

Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in a no-confidence vote last April, was wounded in his leg but not in a critical condition, according to Pakistani officials. 

On his part, President Arif Alvi wrote on Twitter that Khan was “safe but injured with few bullets in his leg and hopefully non-critical”.

Officials said an assailant fired on Khan’s convoy during a march intended to challenge the government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.

Officials from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party revealed that many others appeared to be hurt in the shooting, with Zarqa Suharwardy Taimur, a PTI senator, telling the Financial Times that at least four were hurt. 

Taimur added that one person had been arrested.

Sharif “severely condemned” the attack. “Violence should have no place in our country’s politics,” the PM wrote on Twitter.  

Ahsan Iqbal, planning minister and a senior member of Sharif’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, said: “Thank God [Khan] is safe.”

After the shooting, Khan was taken in an ambulance to the Shaukat Khanum Memorial hospital in Lahore. 

Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper quoted Imran Ismail, a senior PTI member who was standing with Khan when he was attacked, as saying the shots were clearly directed at him. 

“It was a straight fire,” he noted. “The bullet was meant to kill, not scare.”