ISLAMABAD, Nov 21: Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf chairman Imran Khan has expressed surprise over the “silence” of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on US drone attacks and vowed to block Nato supply routes in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa from Saturday.

Speaking at a news conference hours after a US drone attack killed six people in Hangu on Thursday, he lashed out at the prime minister for failing to raise the drone issue in his recent meeting with President Barack Obama and at the United Nations.

After killing thousands of people in tribal areas, Mr Khan said, the US had now expanded its area of operations and started attacking settled areas within the limits of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. He termed Thursday’s drone strike an attack on the KP province and announced that his party would issue the names and photographs of those killed in the attack.

Flanked by party’s vice chairman Shah Mehmood Qureshi and information secretary Shireen Mazari, the PTI chief said a call for blocking Nato supplies had been given from the party platform, but now an emergency meeting of the provincial cabinet had been convened and a decision of the KP government would soon be known to everyone.

He said the US had been killing citizens of Pakistan, but the prime minister did not even have the courage to condemn drone attacks.He regretted that the US had carried out the drone strike only a day after the PM’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs, Sartaj Aziz, told a Senate committee that Washington had assured that it would halt drone strikes during peace talks with the Taliban.

Mr Khan said it was a message from the US that it did not give any importance to the present rulers and would “keep them on the toe of its shoes”. He lamented that the country was passing through a difficult time, but the prime minister continued with his foreign trips.

Asking Nawaz Sharif to come out with a clear stance on the drone issue, the PTI chairman alleged that like the previous government, the present rulers had adopted a dual policy on the drone issue.

Imran Khan vowed that the PTI would hold a “historic protest” in Peshawar on Saturday against drone attacks on the peace process in the country. He challenged the PML-N leadership that if it was not afraid of the US it should support the PTI’s call for blocking the Nato routes.