PTI chief Imran Khan, Senator Faisal Javed and several other party leaders were among those wounded in gunfire on the long march container at Wazirabad\u2019s Allah Wala Chowk on Thursday.
\nThe attack, characterised by the PTI as \u201ctargeted\u201d, has triggered widespread condemnation from across the political divide.
\nThere were also reports of the death of a party worker who was in the city to welcome the caravan, which was there for the party\u2019s second iteration of its \u201cAzadi\u201d march. The assailant was reportedly subdued.
\nSenator Javed, who was also wounded and had blood stains on his clothes, \u201cSeveral of our colleagues are wounded. We heard that one of them is dead.\u201d
\nAccording to PTI\u2019s Imran Ismail, the party chief reportedly \u201creceived three to four bullets in his leg\u201d while Javed was grazed by a bullet, according to Hammad Azhar.
\n\u201cIt was a clear assassination attempt. Khan was hit but he\u2019s stable. There was a lot of bleeding,\u201d Fawad Chaudhry told Reuters. \u201cIf the shooter had not been stopped by people there, the entire PTI leadership would have been wiped out.\u201d
\nAzhar also said that PTI workers Omer Meyer and Rashid also received a gunshot each.
\nLocal PTI members Ahmed Chattha and Chaudhry Yousuf were also injured.
\nFollowing the incident, Imran Khan was immediately shifted to a car and taken to a nearby hospital while other injured people were taken by ambulances to the nearby Wazirabad Institute of Cardiology.
\nAccording to rescue officials and PTI, ten people were injured due to the firing, including the PTI officials. Reports also said that one child was included in the injured people.
\nFootage on television showed an injured Imran Khan waving to supporters after reportedly being shot and then being carried to his bulletproof pickup truck.
\nIn separate footage broadcast on television, one alleged assailant could be seen being subdued by party supporters and subsequent photos showed him being taken away but what looked like policemen
\nPTI condemns the \u201cassassination attack\u201d
\nPTI\u2019s Farrukh Habib confirmed that the party chairman was injured.
\nShortly after the \u201cassassination attempt\u201d, PTI\u2019s official account shared a video of Javed \u2014 who had bandages on his face and clothes were blood-stained \u2014 asking people to pray for Imran.
\nPTI\u2019s Shahbaz Gill blamed PML-N\u2019s Rana Sana for the attack as \u201che was giving threats of a fatal attack for many days by saying words like \u2019crushing the head\u201d.
\nPTI\u2019s Shireen Mazari also reiterated the allegation of Gill while also saying, \u201cThe string pullers, the establishment will also be held responsible by the nation for this murderous attack on Imran Khan.\u201d
\nPrime Minister Shehbaz Sharif took notice of and \u201cseverely condemned\u201d the firing incident.
\nHe also instructed Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah to seek an immediate report on the incident from the IGP and chief secretary Punjab.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
PTI chief Imran Khan, Senator Faisal Javed and several other party leaders were among those wounded in gunfire on the long march container at Wazirabad\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2444,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news-updates"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2443\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2444"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}