(Bloomberg) -- Pakistan’s government has launched a crackdown and arrested several protesters of former prime minister Imran Khan’s party that started a sit-in in Islamabad to demand his release from jail after two days of violent protests that left at least six dead.
There is a search operation ongoing and a large number of protesters have been arrested, said information minister Attaullah Tarar speaking to private channel ARY News. The main protest area has been cleared and all the barricades will be removed on Wednesday, said Tarar. The crackdown is very severe, Zulfi Bukhari, a spokesman for Khan’s party said in a text message.
Thousands of Khan’s supporters breached roadblocks and clashed with the police for the past two days to converge in Islamabad, defying efforts by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government to stop them from entering Islamabad. The authorities earlier switched off street lights at the protest site. Khan’s party shared visuals of the empty main truck set on fire that senior party leaders stood atop to lead the march since November 24.
The protest is seen as the biggest political challenge since Sharif’s coalition government took power after national elections in February. The premier has said such protests serve as a distraction to his government that is confronted with a critical task of reforming the country’s weak economy by taking difficult decisions under the International Monetary Fund’s new loan program. Those include taxing the agriculture and retail sectors that have resisted attempts in the past.
The violent protests have killed at least four security officials and two supporters of the politician who has been in jail for more than a year. The nation’s benchmark KSE-100 Index fell 3.2%, the most in 11 months, at close on November 26.
(Updates with government comments in second paragraph.)
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