Pakistan police arrest over 100 supporters of Imran Khan

Pakistani police have arrested more than 100 supporters of opposition leader Imran Khan's Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party who entered Islamabad ahead of a planned protest in the capital, the interior minister says.

"About 450 people entered Islamabad today," Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan told a press conference in Islamabad on Sunday, adding, "Police intercepted them but most of them ran away, many leaving their cars behind. Police arrested more than 100 of them."

The minister said officers had confiscated seven Kalashnikov rifles, 21 rifle magazines, seven bulletproof jackets and tear gas canisters during the arrests.

Some 1,200 PTI activists, the Pakistani minister said, tried to drive in convoy to Islamabad from the northwestern city of Peshawar on Saturday night. When security forces stopped them on the motorway, they beat up officers but had to retreat when reinforcements arrived, he added.

The interior minister also stated that the PTI planned to occupy an office complex housing government ministries in Islamabad. "They want to occupy the Pakistan Secretariat and the plan is not to allow government employees to enter."

"The lockdown of the capital is not a crime against government, but a crime against the state. We are a nuclear power and what impression will it make before the world if a mob comes to the capital of the country to shut it down?"

Imran Khan has vehemently denied that his supporters possessed weapons.

Khan, a former Pakistan cricket star turned politician, has described the upcoming mass protest  on November 2 as a final push to force Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to resign over corruption allegations.

SS