I was rescued by a hero when two gunmen shot at me – I thought shots were firecrackers before my leg gave way, says Imran Khan

IMRAN Khan has revealed his life was saved by a hero attempting to snatch a gun from a would-be assassin.

The cricket legend is reliving the moment he mistook shots for firecrackers before his leg buckled during the assassination attempt after being ousted as Pakistan’s prime minister.

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He was telling Piers Morgan’s Uncensored show on Talk TV that he owed his life to a quick-thinking viewer when gunmen opened fire and punched him in the leg.

The 70-year-old Khan was speaking from his campaign vehicle in Wazirabad in the east of the country when he was shot at.

Television footage of the rally showed a bystander grabbing an attacker’s hand with a gun and pulling him back.

Khan explained that there were two gunmen, one of whom was “just 20 feet away” on his left.

“The two heroes that saved me, one was this guy, when he saw him taking out that gun, this guy immediately grabbed his hand and when he tried to grab the gun,” he said.

“The gun went down and that’s how I was saved. Because I would have gotten all the bullets on my torso (but) they went into my legs.

“Then this other guy tried it, he had two more magazines.”

At that point, a father, who came to the rally with his two children, attacked the second gunman but was shot in the face and killed.

“If that guy hadn’t intervened, the guy would have gotten two magazines and kept shooting,” he said.

“That touched me very much, not just me, but the whole country.

“There was this picture of him lying dead with his two children sitting on either side trying to wake him up. That was probably the scariest page I’ve ever seen.”

Khan said he was also saved because he was initially hit in the leg and “collapsed so the bullets went over my head”.

The politician was seen standing on a container truck moving slowly through a crowded crowd as he aimed at the anti-government protest.

Crowds cheered Khan, who was ousted as prime minister in a parliamentary confidence vote in April when the gunfire rang out.

Khan, the former captain of the Pakistan national team, described the moment the bullets landed.

“First it sounded like firecrackers and then my right leg buckled from being hit by those bullets. At first it felt like a burning sensation.

“When I got hit in my leg and fell, and when I fell and the firing stopped, I realized I had been saved.

“I checked myself because I was deaf at the beginning and I checked my body: ‘Where did I hit?’ … I didn’t bleed too much.”

Khan says he is now recovering after being treated at the hospital he built after his mother died from cancer.

“I had three bullets removed from my right leg and some shrapnel in my left leg.

“So one of the bullets broke my shin, so that’s going to take a little while. But I’m recovering and I’m happy – it could have been a lot worse.”

Khan has accused the military of backing a plan to oust him from power.

At the time of the attack, Khan’s officials from Pakistan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party accused Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and intelligence official Major General Faisal Naseer of being behind the attack.

Khan told Piers Morgan the attack was a “conspiracy” after the “unprecedented public reaction” shook those who removed him from office.

“I think from then on they expected my party’s popularity to go down. In fact, things went up. That was when my life was in danger.”

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