asia
6.5 magnitude quake rattles Afghanistan, Pakistan
A magnitude 6.5 earthquake rattled much of Afghanistan and Pakistan on Tuesday, sending panicked residents fleeing from their homes and frightening people even in remote villages.
Twelve people were injured in northwest Pakistan in the quake, which was centered in Afghanistan and also felt in bordering Tajikistan.
The tremors were so powerful that many people fled their homes and offices in Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, some reciting verses from the Quran, Islam’s holy book.
The scene was repeated in Kabul and other parts of Afghanistan.
“The quake was so strong and terrifying, we thought houses are collapsing on us, people were all shouting and were shocked,” said Shafiullah Azimi, a Kabul resident.
The U.S. Geological Survey said the center of the magnitude 6.5 quake was located 40 kilometers (25 miles) south-southeast of Jurm in Afghanistan’s mountainous Hindukush region, bordering Pakistan and Tajikistan.
Rakhshinda Tauseed, a physician, said she was at her hospital in the eastern Pakistani city of Lahore when the earthquake hit. “I quickly asked patients to go move to a safer place,” she said.
Khurram Shahzad, a resident in Pakistan’s garrison city of Rawalpindi, said he was having dinner with his family at a restaurant when the walls started swaying.
“I quickly thought that it is a big one, and we left the restaurant and came out,” he told The Associated Press by phone. He said he saw hundreds of people standing on the streets.
The situation was similar in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province on the border with Afghanistan, where people were seen standing outside their homes and offices.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif in a statement said he asked disaster management officials to remain vigilant to handle any situation.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the main spokesman for the Taliban government in Afghanistan, tweeted that the Ministry of Public Health had ordered all health centers to be on standby.
The region is prone to violent seismic upheavals. A magnitude 7.6 quake in 2005 killed thousands of people in Pakistan and Kashmir.
Last year in southeastern Afghanistan, a 6.1 magnitude quake struck a rugged, mountainous region, flattening stone and mud-brick homes. Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers put the total death toll from the quake at 1,150, with hundreds more injured, while the U.N. has offered a lower estimate of 770.
Millions lack safe water months after Pakistan floods
The United Nations children’s agency on Tuesday warned that after last summer’s devastating floods, 10 million people in Pakistan, including children, still live in flood-affected areas without access to safe drinking water.
The statement from UNICEF underscored the dire situation in impoverished Pakistan, a country with a population of 220 million that months later is still struggling with the consequences of the flooding, as well as a spiraling economic crisis. The floods, which experts attribute in part to climate change, killed 1,739 people, including 647 children and 353 women.
So far, less than half of UNICEF’s funding appeal for Pakistan — 45% of $173.5 million — has been met. According to the agency, before the floods struck last June, water from only 36% of Pakistan’s water system was considered safe for human consumption.
The floods damaged most of the water pipelines systems in affected areas, forcing more than 5.4 million people, including 2.5 million children, to rely solely on contaminated water from ponds and wells, UNICEF said.
“Safe drinking water is not a privilege, it is a basic human right,” said Abdullah Fadil, the UNICEF representative in Pakistan. “Yet, every day, millions of girls and boys in Pakistan are fighting a losing battle against preventable waterborne diseases and the consequential malnutrition.”“We need the continued support of our donors to provide safe water, build toilets and deliver vital sanitation services to these children and families who need them the most,” Fadil added.
Amid the crisis, Pakistan faces uncertainty about a bailout from the International Monetary Fund. Analysts say the revival of the $6 billion IMF bailout, which was signed in 2019, would help Pakistan. If the global lender released a key installment of the package, it would encourage other international financial institutions to help the country, they say.
At a U.N-backed conference in Geneva in January, dozens of countries and international institutions pledged more than $9 billion to help Pakistan recover and rebuild from the floods. But most of the pledges were in form of project loans, and the projects are still in the planning stages.
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif’s government is also facing a surge in militant attacks and political instability as his predecessor, Imran Khan, is campaigning for early elections. Sharif has rejected the demands by Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April.
Sharif seeks political and economic stability to ensure speedy reconstruction in the flood-hit areas, where the weakest and the children are paying the price.
“In flood-affected areas, more than 1.5 million boys and girls are already severely malnourished, and the numbers will only rise in the absence of safe water and proper sanitation,” UNICEF said.
The floods caused more than $30 billion in damages as large swaths of the country remained under water for months, forcing millions to live in tents or make-shift homes near stagnant waters that led to the spread of disease.
Sharif’s government is also trying to provide food and cash assistance to flood survivors as the Islamic fasting month of Ramadan starts this week, adding more financial burdens to the poorest of the population.
The UNICEF warning came ahead of World Water Day, which will be observed on Wednesday as part of global efforts to highlight the importance of freshwater and advocate for sustainable management of the vital resource.
Asian stocks rise ahead of Fed's next interest rate decision
Asian stock markets followed Wall Street higher on Tuesday ahead of a Federal Reserve decision on another possible interest rate hike amid worries about global banks.
Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul advanced. Japanese markets were closed for a holiday. Oil prices declined.
Wall Street's benchmark S&P 500 index rose 0.9% on Monday after U.S., European and Japanese central banks announced measures to ease strains on the financial system, including lending more dollars if necessary.
The collapse of two U.S. banks and the takeover of troubled Credit Suisse have heightened fears other lenders might crack under the strain of repeated rate hikes to cool economic activity and inflation that is near multi-decade highs.
Traders expect the Fed to go ahead with another rate hike Wednesday but think it might be held to 0.25 percentage points, down from the 0.5 points previously expected.
“Can the Federal Reserve really continue to hike rates in the face of a banking crisis?" Clifford Bennett of ACY Securities said in a report. “There are ongoing stresses in the banking system that will only grow with further rate hikes.”
The Shanghai Composite Index gained 0.4% to 3,246.88 and the Hang Seng in Hong Kong advanced 0.9% to 19,175.92.
The Kospi in Seoul rose 0.4% to 2,387.52 and Sydney's S&P-ASX 200 surged 0.8% to 6,955.40.
New Zealand declined while Southeast Asian markets rose.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 rose to 3,951.57. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 1.2% to 32,244.58. The Nasdaq composite added 0.4% to 11,675.54.
Swiss regulators arranged Sunday for UBS to acquire rival Credit Suisse for almost $3.25 billion.
Credit Suisse has been battling a unique set of problems for years, but they came to a head last week as its stock price tumbled to a record low.
Attention in the United States has focused on smaller and mid-sized banks.
The surge in the Fed's benchmark lending rate to a range of 4.5% to 4.75%, up from close to zero at the start of last year, caused prices of bonds and other assets on banks' books to fall, raising concern about their financial health.
First Republic Bank has been at the center of investors’ crosshairs in the hunt for the industry’s next victim. Its shares fell 47.1% after S&P Global Ratings cut its credit rating for the second time in a week.
S&P said it could lower the rating even further despite a group of the biggest U.S. banks announcing last week they would deposit $30 billion in a sign of faith in First Republic.
New York Community Bancorp jumped 31.7% after it agreed to buy much of Signature Bank in a $2.7 billion deal. Signature Bank became the industry’s third-largest failure earlier this month.
In energy markets, benchmark U.S. crude lost 56 cents to $67.26 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose 90 cents on Monday to $67.64. Brent crude, the price basis for international oil trading, declined 59 cents to $73.20 per barrel in London. It gained 82 cents the previous session to $73.79.
The dollar rose to 131.39 yen from Monday's 131.32 yen. The euro declined to $1.0713 from $1.0724.
Ignoring experts, China's sudden zero-COVID exit cost lives
When China suddenly scrapped onerous zero-COVID measures in December, the country wasn’t ready for a massive onslaught of cases, with hospitals turning away ambulances and crematoriums burning bodies around the clock.
Chinese state media claimed the decision to open up was based on “scientific analysis and shrewd calculation,” and “by no means impulsive." But in reality, China’s ruling Communist Party ignored repeated efforts by top medical experts to kickstart exit plans until it was too late, The Associated Press found.
Instead, the reopening came suddenly at the onset of winter, when the virus spreads most easily. Many older people weren’t vaccinated, pharmacies lacked antivirals, and hospitals didn’t have adequate supplies or staff — leading to as many as hundreds of thousands of deaths that may have been avoided, according to academic modeling, more than 20 interviews with current and former China Center for Disease Control and Prevention employees, experts and government advisors, and internal reports and directives obtained by the AP.
“If they had a real plan to exit earlier, so many things could have been avoided,” said Zhang Zuo-Feng, an epidemiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles. “Many deaths could have been prevented.”
Experts estimate that many hundreds of thousands of people, perhaps millions, may have died in China’s wave of COVID-19 — far higher than the official toll of under 90,000, but still a much lower death rate than in Western countries. However, 200,000 to 300,000 deaths could have been prevented if the country was better vaccinated and stocked with antivirals, according to modeling by the University of Hong Kong. Some scientists estimate even more lives could have been saved.
“It wasn’t a sound public health decision at all,” said a China CDC official, declining to be named to speak candidly on a sensitive matter. “It’s absolutely bad timing … this was not a prepared opening.”
For two years, China stood out for its tough but successful controls against the virus, credited with saving millions of lives as other countries struggled with stop-and-start lockdowns. But with the emergence of the highly infectious omicron variant last year, many of China’s top medical experts and officials worried zero-COVID was unsustainable.
In late 2021, China’s leaders began discussing how to lift restrictions. As early as March 2022, top medical experts submitted a detailed reopening strategy to the State Council, China’s cabinet. The existence of the document is being reported for the first time by the AP.
But discussions were silenced after an outbreak the same month in Shanghai, which prompted Chinese leader Xi Jinping to lock the city down. Chinese public health experts stopped speaking publicly about preparing for an exit, as they were wary of openly challenging a policy supported by Xi.
By the time the Shanghai outbreak was under control, China was months away from the 20th Party Congress, the country’s most important political meeting in a decade, making reopening politically difficult. So the country stuck to mass testing and quarantining millions of people.
“Everybody waits for the party congress,” said one medical expert, declining to be named to comment on a sensitive topic. “There’s inevitably a degree of everyone being very cautious.”
At the Congress in mid-October, top officials differing with Xi were sidelined. Instead, six loyalists followed Xi onstage in a new leadership lineup, signaling his total domination of the party.
With the congress over, some voices in the public health sector finally piped up. In an internal document published Oct. 28, obtained by The Associated Press and reported here for the first time, Wu Zunyou, China’s CDC chief epidemiologist, criticized the Beijing city government for excessive COVID-19 controls, saying it had “no scientific basis." He called it a “distortion” of the central government’s zero-COVID policy, which risked “intensifying public sentiment and causing social dissatisfaction.”
Read more: Facing COVID surge, China expanding hospitals, ICUs
At the same time, he called the virus policies of the central government “absolutely correct.” One former CDC official said Wu felt helpless because he was ordered to advocate for zero-COVID in public, even as he disagreed at times with its excesses in private.
Wu did not respond to an email requesting comment. A person acquainted with Wu confirmed he wrote the internal report.
Another who spoke up was Zhong Nanshan, a doctor renowned for raising the alarm about the original COVID outbreak Wuhan. He wrote to Xi personally, telling him that zero-COVID was not sustainable and urging a gradual reopening, said a person acquainted with Zhong.
In early November, then-Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, China’s top “COVID czar,” summoned experts from sectors including health, travel and the economy to discuss adjusting Beijing’s virus policies, according to three people with direct knowledge of the meetings. On Nov. 10, Xi ordered adjustments.
The next day, Beijing announced 20 new measures tweaking restrictions, such as reclassifying risk zones and reducing quarantine times. But at the same time, Xi made clear, China was sticking to zero-COVID.
The government wanted order. Instead, the measures caused chaos.
With conflicting signals from the top, local governments weren’t sure whether to lock down or open up. Policies changed by the day.
In late November, public frustration boiled over. A deadly apartment fire in China’s far west Xinjiang region sparked nationwide protests over locked doors and other virus control measures. Some called on Xi to resign, the most direct challenge to the Communist Party’s power since pro-democracy protests in 1989.
Riot police moved in and the protests were swiftly quelled. But behind the scenes, the mood was shifting.
References to zero-COVID vanished from government statements. State newswire Xinhua said the pandemic was causing “fatigue, anxiety and tension,” and that the cost of controlling it was increasing day by day.
Days after the protests, Sun held meetings where she told medical experts the state planned to “walk briskly” out of zero-COVID. The final decision was made suddenly, and with little direct input from public health experts, several told the AP.
“None of us expected the 180-degree turn,” a government advisor said.
Many in the Chinese government believe the protests accelerated Xi’s decision to scrap virus controls entirely, according to three current and former state employees.
“It was the trigger,” said one, not identified because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
On Dec. 6, Xi instructed officials to change COVID-19 controls, Xinhua reported.
Read more: WHO 'continues to urge' China to share more data amid Covid surge
The next day, Chinese health authorities announced 10 sweeping measures that effectively scrapped controls, canceling virus test requirements, mandatory centralized quarantine and location-tracking health QR codes. The decision to reopen so suddenly caught the country by surprise.
“Even three days’ notice would have been good,” said a former China CDC official. “The way this happened was just unbelievable.”
Saudi Arabia frees American imprisoned over critical tweets
Saudi Arabia on Monday freed a 72-year-old American citizen it had imprisoned for more than a year over old tweets critical of the kingdom's crown prince, his son said.
Neither Saudi nor U.S. officials immediately confirmed the release of Saad Almadi, a dual U.S.-Saudi citizen and, until his imprisonment in Saudi Arabia, a longtime retiree in Florida. There had been word since last week of progress toward Almadi's release.
Almadi on Monday night was at home with family members who live in Riyadh, said his son, Ibrahim Almadi, in the United States. Saudi officials dropped all charges against the elder Almadi, Ibrahim Almadi and advocates familiar with the case said. But it was not immediately clear whether the kingdom would lift a travel ban it had imposed to follow the prison sentence to allow the elder Almadi to return to the United States.
The Florida man's imprisonment over tweets had been one of several alleged human rights abuses that had soured relations between Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and President Joe Biden. That included Saudi officials' killing of a U.S.-based journalist Jamal Khashoggi inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018, and prison sentences and travel bans that Saudi Arabia under the crown prince's tenure has given Saudi rights advocates and perceived rivals and critics of the powerful crown prince.
Both Prince Mohammed and the Biden administration recently have taken steps toward restoring better relations. The two countries are partners in a decades-old security arrangement in which the U.S. provides security for Saudi Arabia and the oil-rich kingdom keeps global markets supplied with oil.
Saudi Arabia had sentenced Almadi last year to 16 years in prison, saying his critical tweets about how the kingdom was being governed amounted to terrorist acts against it.
As U.S. officials worked to win his release, and after Biden traveled to Saudi Arabia last summer in an attempt to improve relations with the oil-rich nation, a Saudi appeals court increased Almadi’s prison sentence to 19 years.
A retired project manager in the United States, Almadi was arrested in 2021 when he arrived for what was to have been a two-week visit to see family in the kingdom. Once in custody, he was confronted by Saudi authorities with tweets he had posted over several years from his home in Florida, his son says.
Almadi's tweets included one noting Prince Salman's consolidation of power in the kingdom, another that included a caricature of the prince, and a tweet that remarked on Khashoggi's killing. US intelligence officials earlier concluded the crown prince authorized the hit team that killed Khashoggi inside a Saudi consulate in Istanbul.
"We are relieved that Saad Almadi has been released, but he should have never spent a day behind bars for innocuous tweets,” said Abdullah Alaoudh, Saudi director for the Freedom Initiative, a U.S.-based group that advocates for those it considers unjustly detained in the Middle East.
Alaoudh urged the U.S. to continue to press for the release of all rights advocates and others detained in Saudi Arabia.
Freedom Initiative says least four U.S. citizens and one legal permanent resident already were detained in Saudi Arabia under travel bans, and that at least one other older U.S. citizen remains imprisoned. Many of the travel bans targeted dual citizens advocating for greater rights in the kingdom, such as Saudi women's right to drive.
Ibrahim Almadi said his father had lost extensive weight in prison and that his health had worsened drastically.
South Korea to restore Japan's trade status to improve ties
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said Tuesday his government will move to restore Japan’s preferential trade status as he pushes to resolve history and trade disputes with Japan despite domestic opposition.
In lengthy, televised comments during a Cabinet Council meeting, Yoon defended his moves, saying that leaving ties with Japan as fraught as they are would be neglecting his duty because greater bilateral cooperation is vital to resolve diverse challenges facing Seoul.
“I thought it would be like neglecting my duty as president if I had also incited hostile nationalism and anti-Japan sentiments to use them for domestic politics while leaving behind the current, grave international political situation,” Yoon said.
He said the need to boost ties with Japan has grown because of North Korea’s advancing nuclear program, the intensifying U.S.-China strategic rivalry and global supply chain challenges.
South Korea and Japan have deep economic and cultural ties and are both key U.S. allies that together host about 80,000 U.S. troops. But their relations have often fluctuated mainly due to issues stemming from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula.
At the center of the recent impasse was the 2018 South Korean court rulings that ordered two Japanese companies to compensate some of their former Korean employees for forced labor during Japan’s colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula. Japan refused to accept the rulings, saying all compensation issues had already been settled when the two countries normalized ties in 1965.
The history disputes spilled over to other issues, with the two countries downgrading each other’s trade status. Japan also tightened controls on exports to South Korea, while Seoul threatened to terminate a military intelligence-sharing pact.
After months of negotiations with Japan, Yoon’s government earlier this month announced it would use local funds to compensate the forced laborer victims involved in the 2018 lawsuits without requiring contributions from the Japanese companies.
Last week, Yoon traveled to Tokyo for a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, during which they agreed to resume regular visits and economic security talks.
Ahead of the summit, the South Korean government said Japan had agreed to lift export controls on South Korea, and that South Korea would also withdraw its complaint to the World Trade Organization once the curbs are removed. They said the two countries would continue talks on restoring each other’s trade status as well.
Read more: Japan, South Korea renew ties at Tokyo summit
Yoon's push has triggered protests from some of the forced labor victims, their supporters and opposition political parties who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies and a direct apology from Tokyo over the forced labor. A public survey suggested about 60% of Koreans opposed Yoon's measures to resolve the forced labor issue.
In his Cabinet Council remarks, Yoon said he will order his trade minister to begin taking legal steps needed to reinclude Japan in a “whitelist” of nations receiving preferential trade status.
He said both South Korea and Japan must remove obstacles that hinder the improvement of bilateral ties. “If South Korea preemptively eliminates obstacles, Japan will surely reciprocate,” he said.
IMF approves crucial $3B bailout for bankrupt Sri Lanka
The International Monetary Fund said Monday that its executive board has approved a nearly $3 billion bailout program for Sri Lanka over four years to help salvage the country’s bankrupt economy.
About $333 million will be disbursed immediately and the approval will also open up financial support from other institutions, the IMF said.
“Sri Lanka has been facing tremendous economic and social challenges with a severe recession amid high inflation, depleted reserves, an unsustainable public debt, and heightened financial sector vulnerabilities,” its statement quoted IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva as saying.
“Institutions and governance frameworks require deep reforms. For Sri Lanka to overcome the crisis, swift and timely implementation of the EFF-supported program with strong ownership for the reforms is critical.”
The approval will unlock financing of up to $7 billion from the IMF and other international multilateral financial institutions, President Ranil Wickremesinghe’s office said.
READ: Pakistan: Police storm Imran Khan home in Lahore, arrest 30
Earlier this month, the last hurdle for the approval was cleared when China joined Sri Lanka’s other creditors in providing debt restructuring assurances.
“From the very start, we committed to full transparency in all our discussions with financial institutions and with our creditors,” Wickremesinghe said in a statement from his office. “I express my gratitude to the IMF and our international partners for their support as we look to get the economy back on track for the long term through prudent fiscal management and our ambitious reform agenda.”
Wickremesinghe said he has made some tough decisions to ensure stability, debt sustainability and to grow an inclusive and internationally attractive economy.
Sri Lanka increased income taxes sharply and removed electricity and fuel subsidies, fulfilling prerequisites of the IMF program. Authorities must now discuss with Sri Lanka’s creditors on how to restructure its debt.
“Having obtained specific and credible financing assurances from major official bilateral creditors, it is now important for the authorities and creditors to make swift progress towards restoring debt sustainability consistent with the IMF-supported program,” Georgieva said.
“The authorities’ commitments to transparently achieve a debt resolution, consistent with the program parameters and equitable burden sharing among creditors in a timely fashion, are welcome,” she said.
Sri Lanka last year suspended repayment of its foreign debt amid a severe foreign currency crisis, because of a fall in tourism and export revenue due to the COVID-19 pandemic, megaprojects funded by Chinese loans that did not generate income, and releasing foreign currency reserves to hold the exchange rates for a longer period.
The currency crisis created severe shortages of some foods, fuel, medicine and cooking gas, leading to angry street protests that forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee the country and resign.
Since Wickremesinghe took over, he has managed to reduce shortages and ended hours-long daily power cuts. The Central Bank says its reserves have improved and the black market no longer controls the foreign currency trade.
However, Wickremesinghe’ s government is likely to face hostility from trade unions over his plans to privatize state ventures as part of his reform agenda and public resentment may increase if he fails to take action against the Rajapaksa family, who people believe were responsible for the economic crisis.
Wickremesinghe’s critics accuse him of shielding the Rajapaksa family, who still control a majority of lawmakers in Parliament, in return for their support for his presidency.
Thai Parliament dissolved, general election set for May
Thailand's Parliament was dissolved Monday by a government decree, setting the stage for a May general election, which has the potential to lessen the military’s influence in politics.
The dissolution, just a few days before the end of the four-year term of the House of Representatives, was initiated by Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, who is seeking a fresh mandate in the vote provisionally set for May 7.
The election will pit the heavily favored opposition Pheu Thai party, backed by billionaire populist Thaksin Shinawatra, against parties representing the conservative establishment, spearheaded by the military.
The leading Pheu Thai candidate is Thaksin’s daughter, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, who is heavily favored in opinion polls.
If elected, she would be the third member of the Shinawatra family to be prime minister in the past two decades. Her father held office in 2001-2006, and Thaksin’s sister Yingluck in 2011-2014. Both of them were toppled by military coups.
Prayuth is a former general who led the 2014 coup and is facing a challenge not only from Pheu Thai but also from his longtime comrade-in-arms and deputy prime minister, Prawit Wongsuwan. He was the declared candidate of a second military-backed party. Prayuth came to power again as head of a coalition government after the 2019 election.
More than 52 million of the country’s population of over 66 million are eligible to vote across 400 constituencies. Four hundred seats will be determined by first-past-the-post races in each constituency. A separate party preference ballot will seat the other 100 members of the House of Representatives from national party lists.
Pakistan: Police storm Imran Khan home in Lahore, arrest 61
Pakistani police stormed former Prime Minister Imran Khan's residence in the eastern city of Lahore on Saturday and arrested 61 people amid tear gas and clashes between Khan's supporters and police, officials said.
Senior police officer Suhail Sukhera, who led the operation in an upscale Lahore neighborhood, said police acted to remove a barricade erected by members of Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party and his defiant supporters. He said they blocked the lanes around Khan's residence with concrete blocks, felled trees, tents and a parked truck.
Khan was not in the home, having traveled to Islamabad to appear before a judge to face charges he sold state gifts while in office and hid his assets. The judge postponed that hearing until March 30.
Sukhera said baton-wielding Khan supporters attempted to resist police by throwing stones and Molotov cocktails and a man on the roof of Khan's residence opened fire. At least three police officers were injured.
Also Read: Pakistan: Police storm Imran Khan home in Lahore, arrest 30
Sukhera said police broke open the main door of Khan’s residence and found automatic weapons, Molotov cocktails, iron rods and batons used in attacks on police during the week. Sukhera said that inside the sprawling residence, illegal structures had been erected to shelter people involved in attacks on police that have injured dozens of officers.
Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah said later that police would do a complete search of Khan’s home, where they found bunkers and suspected more illegal weapons and ammunition were hidden.
Witnesses in Lahore said police attempted to disperse Khan's supporters by firing tear gas and chased them to several homes in the Zaman Park neighborhood.
Khan's lawyer appeared in an Islamabad court on Saturday after a top court a day earlier suspended Khan's arrest warrant, giving him a reprieve to travel to Islamabad and face charges in the graft case without being detained.
Khan had been holed up at his home in Lahore since Tuesday after failing to appear at an earlier hearing in the case. His supporters hurled rocks and clashed with baton-wielding police for two days to protect the former premier from arrest.
Khan's motorcade arrived Saturday near the federal judicial complex in Islamabad, where his supporters also clashed with police who prevented them from entering the complex. The enraged Khan supporters threw rocks at police who responded by lobbing tear gas canisters to disperse them.Sanaullah said many of Khan's supporters were armed.
Khan's attorney, Babar Awan, filed an application for Khan's exemption from appearance in court amid special circumstances.
Law Minister Azam Nazeer Tarar condemned Khan for not turning himself over to police and not appearing in court Saturday despite arriving at the judicial complex gate. He accused Khan of using his protesting supporters to avoid indictment.
Khan’s supporters set two police vehicles and several motorcycles outside the judicial complex on fire while dispersing, according to Tarar.
Khan, during his road trip to Islamabad, said in a video message that police had broken into his residence in Lahore while his wife was alone at the home. He condemned the action and demanded that those responsible be punished.
Khan’s PTI party secretary-general, Asad Umar, in a letter to Pakistan's chief justice noted that police waited until Khan was en route to Islamabad to storm his Lahore residence. He said the “doors and walls have been razed to the ground” and more than 40 people at the home were arrested.
Khan, now the opposition leader, was ousted in a no-confidence vote in Parliament last April. He is accused of selling state gifts while in office and concealing assets, charges he denies. It’s one in a string of cases that the former cricket star turned Islamist politician has been facing since his ouster.
The 70-year-old Khan, who has called for early elections in Parliament, has claimed that his removal from power was part of a conspiracy by his successor, Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, and the United States. Both Washington and Sharif’s government have denied the allegation.
N Korea launches missile into sea amid US-S Korea drills
North Korea launched a short-range ballistic missile toward the sea on Sunday, its neighbors said, ramping up testing activities in response to U.S.-South Korean military drills that it views as an invasion rehearsal.
The missile launched from the North's northwestern region flew across the country before it landed in the waters off its east coast, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement.
It said South Korea's military has boosted its surveillance posture and maintains a readiness in close coordination with the United States.
Japan’s Defense Ministry said a suspected North Korean missile was launched on Sunday morning. It said the suspected weapon landed outside Japan's exclusive economic zone. There were no immediate reports of damage in the area.
Also Read: North Korea says ICBM launch was response to rivals' drills
The launch was the North’s third round of weapons tests since the U.S. and South Korean militaries began their joint military drills last Monday.
The latest U.S.-South Korean drills, which include computer simulations and field exercises, are to continue until Thursday. The field exercises are the biggest of their kind since 2018.
The North views such U.S.-South Korean military drills as a practice to launch an invasion, though Washington and Seoul have steadfastly said their training is defensive in nature.
The weapons North Korea recently tested include its longest-range Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile designed to strike the U.S. mainland. The North’s state media quoted leader Kim Jong Un as saying the ICBM launch was meant to “strike fear into the enemies.”
A day before the start of the drills, North Korea also fired cruise missiles from a submarine. The North’s state media said the submarine-launched missile was a demonstration of its resolve to respond with “overwhelming powerful” force to the intensifying military maneuvers by “the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet forces.”