Imran Khan now says 3 shooters tried to kill him in Wazirabad

Islamabad: Pakistan’s ousted prime minister Imran Khan said on Saturday that there were three shooters involved in the assassination attempt on him during a protest march in the eastern city of Wazirabad on November 3.

The chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party suffered bullet injuries in the right leg when the gunmen fired at him in Punjab’s Wazirabad area, where he was leading the march against the government to press for snap elections.

Addressing a massive rally of his party in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Saturday, Khan said the two attackers previously identified were the one who fired at him and other PTI leaders and the second shooter fired at the container’s front, while the third person was meant to silence the assassin so that no details could be divulged.

Khan, 70, claimed that this third shooter actually killed a person at the rally while trying to kill the would-be assassin, the Dawn newspaper reported.

Addressing the nation from the Shaukat Khanum Hospital in Lahore a day after the attack, Khan had said he was hit by four bullets in his right leg by two shooters.

He said he was on a container when a “burst of bullets” was directed at him.

“Then a second burst came, there were two people,” he said.

He once again blamed Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and Major General Faisal Naseer for hatching a plot to assassinate him.

Khan was ousted from power in April after losing a no-confidence vote in his leadership, which he alleged was part of a US-led conspiracy targeting him because of his independent foreign policy decisions on Russia, China, and Afghanistan. The US has denied the allegations.

He is the only Pakistani prime minister to be ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament. The term of the current National Assembly will end in August 2023.