QUETTA: Shops and markets remained closed in Quetta’s major areas on Friday as Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) supporters sta­ged demonstrations and bloc­ked roads in different neighbourhoods to protest the assassination attempt on party chairman Imran Khan.

However, people went about their business on the city’s outskirts, though most businesses were already closed due to the weekly off on Friday.

At one of the markets on Jinnah Road, sticks-wielding PTI activists asked traders to put up the shutters.

Meanwhile, the protesters also blocked the road near the airport by burning tyres and putting up barricades.

Later, led by PTI’s Balochistan President Qasim Khan Suri and other leaders, demonstrators held a rally from the party’s provincial secretariat in Shahbaz Town and marched on different roads carrying party flags and Imran Khan’s portraits.

The participants, including some female workers, gathered at Manan Chowk in the main city area where Mr Suri, party’s founding member Akhtar Mando­khail, provincial general secretary Dr Munir Baloch, Jamiat Ulema Islam Pakistan Nazryati leader Sadiq Noor Razai, Munawar Baloch, Nawabzada Sharif Jogezai, Muhammad Asif Tareen and others addressed the crowd.

They strongly condemned Thursday’s shooting targeting Mr Khan and said such “cowardly attacks” could not force the PTI and its leadership to abandon their struggle to achieve “real freedom”.

Referring to the coalition government, Mr Suri said: “The imported government and its handlers are involved in the attempt on Imran Khan’s life.” He said the entire nation was with the PTI chairman, “who is leading the people of the country towards the right path of democracy and real freedomdence”.

Published in Dawn, November 5th, 2022