ISLAMABAD (AP) — Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari on Sunday declared a state of emergency in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan and suspended its government, which is led by imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s party, ahead of a planned march on Islamabad by supporters demanding his release.
Zardari acted on the recommendation of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s Cabinet, according to a statement from the president’s office. The measures place the province under the authority of the governor, who represents the federal government.
The announcement came hours after Sharif’s office said that the federal Cabinet had recommended emergency rule, accusing the provincial government of “deliberate disengagement from the fight against terrorism.”
No protests were reported against the suspension of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s government, where police detained several supporters of Khan’s PTI party overnight. Authorities deployed additional police and security forces in the province and Islamabad to prevent unrest.
Shipping containers placed by police along key routes in Islamabad since last month to block potential rallies have disrupted traffic and forced residents in the capital and neighboring Rawalpindi to take lengthy detours.
Khan’s spokesperson, Zulfiquar Bukhari, condemned the suspension of the provincial government, calling it a disguised coup. He said the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government was the only one with a genuine popular mandate following the February 2024 parliamentary elections, which Khan’s party says were rigged.
“Now that little bit of democracy is also gone,” Bukhari said in a statement.
Referring to recent talks between Khan’s party and the federal government, Bukhari accused officials of having no intention of reaching an agreement. He said government representatives had focused on counterterrorism, while Khan’s representatives had come to discuss the imprisoned leader’s basic human rights.
Khan is Sharif’s main political rival and has been imprisoned since 2023 on corruption and other charges that he and his party say are politically motivated. Despite his imprisonment, he retains a substantial and passionate support base, keeping him at the center of Pakistan’s turbulent political landscape.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, and the federal government last week held talks to postpone the march but failed to reach a resolution. Gohar Khan, the party’s chairman, said days ago that negotiations remained deadlocked after two rounds.
Beside Khan’s release, Khan's party demanded his transfer to a hospital and permission for his family to visit him. Sharif's government has said Khan is in good health and receives regular family visits but maintains that meetings with the imprisoned former leader cannot be used for political purposes.
The province’s chief minister, Sohail Afridi, on Saturday urged supporters to prepare to march on Islamabad. Afridi launched the protest campaign last week, leading marches through several districts in the province.
Sharif’s government has been urging Afridi since last month to postpone the march, citing a surge in attacks by the Pakistani Taliban in the northwest. It has also accused Khan’s party of sympathizing with the militant group, also known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan.
Khan's party said Afridi and his former Cabinet members had been detained.
Political analyst Azeem Chaudhry said the emergency measures gave Gov. Faisal Karim Kundi the powers of the provincial chief executive, removing Khan’s party from power in the only province it governed. He said the provincial assembly and Afridi’s Cabinet were also suspended.
Pakistan has witnessed a surge in militant violence in recent years, much of it blamed on the TTP, a separate group but a close ally of the Afghan Taliban, who returned to power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021. Islamabad has repeatedly accused Afghanistan's Taliban government of providing sanctuary to TTP militants, an allegation Kabul denies.
A road barricaded with shipping containers by authorities is seen ahead of a protest by the supporters of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan demanding his release, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zubair)
Police officers stand guard at a road barricaded with shipping containers by authorities ahead of a protest by the supporters of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan demanding his release, in Peshawar, Pakistan. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zubair)
A police officer stands guard at a road barricaded with shipping containers by authorities ahead of a protest by the supporters of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan demanding his release, in Peshawar, Pakistan, Sunday, Oct. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Mohammad Zubair)
CAIRO (AP) — Saudi Arabia on Sunday extended the closure of the country’s main international airport, according to an online flight tracker, a day after a missile attack on the facility killed 12 people from several countries and wounded more than 300 in a major escalation of the war between Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthis and the kingdom.
A Saudi-led coalition in Yemen blamed Saturday afternoon's attack on the Houthis. The attack was the latest of several in the past week on King Khalid International Airport in the capital Riyadh — and it marked the deadliest in any Gulf Arab country since the start of the Iran war.
International leaders condemned the attack, and U.S. President Donald Trump said he was considering whether to join Saudi strikes against the rebels. The Houthis threatened further escalation.
The Houthi-run Health Ministry said Sunday that 91 Yemenis have been killed and 168 injured by the Saudi-led coalition in five weeks. It said that 60% of those killed were women and children.
Saudi Arabia is the world’s top crude oil exporter, and the attacks have pushed oil prices up and rattled markets.
As Saudi authorities extended Saturday's airport closure until at least 9 p.m. Sunday, according to Flightradar24, the Houthis said the kingdom's airports were attack targets.
Brig. Gen. Yahya Saree, the group's military spokesman, urged “everyone to take our warnings seriously."
The latest attack on the Saudi airport drew condemnations from Arab countries, including Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, as well as U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
“Attacks by Iran’s proxies are pushing the region into a spiral of violence," Von der Leyen wrote Sunday on X. “They are destabilizing crucial global transport and energy nodes."
The attack struck an airport complex housing terminals 3 and 4 for domestic flights, a regional official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to the media.
The Saudi statement said the dead included four Saudi citizens, two Bangladeshi nationals, a Palestinian, a U.S. citizen, an Egyptian, a Jordanian, a Syrian and a Sudanese. It said several hospitals were treating the injured.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged in a social media post that an American citizen had been killed in the attack, which he condemned.
The Egyptian woman was a flight attendant identified as Azza Ramzy, 28, who worked for the Saudi airline Flybas, according to the Egyptian state-run Al-Qahera New television.
The attack is expected to increase Saudi pressure on allies, including the United States, to provide military support for the kingdom.
Shortly after the attack, Trump said he was evaluating whether the U.S. should join Saudi strikes against the rebels. “We may. We’re going to look at it,” he said. “We just found out about the recent attack. So we’ll make a decision. We move very quickly.”
Trump said later Saturday he planned to speak with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Asked if the U.S. might get involved, Trump responded, “We’ll find out.”
The Houthis claimed attacks earlier in the week on King Khalid International Airport that killed three Saudis, including a pilot. The airport has no military facilities.
The surge in attacks, including against other Saudi airports, military facilities and oil infrastructure, has come in the week since a Saudi-led coalition launched a major military offensive against the Houthis.
Until recently, the Houthis had been largely on the sidelines of the Iran war. Now, the rebels are a way for Tehran to pressure a key U.S. ally. Houthi attacks, along with their control of the Bab el-Mandeb waterway, also threaten to add new disruptions to the flow of oil from the region.
The Saudis and the Houthis began fighting in 2015 when the kingdom entered Yemen’s civil war on behalf of the internationally recognized government.
Relative calm after a 2022 ceasefire ended in July when the Houthis resumed attacks, saying the Saudis fired on the Sanaa airport as a plane from Iran was trying to land. That revived anger over the Saudi-led blockade that has largely isolated Houthi-run areas.
Now fighting has escalated, with the Saudi-led coalition providing air support for Yemeni government forces attempting to reverse recent Houthi gains along the Red Sea. Those gains gave the rebels better surveillance of shipping on the Bab el-Mandeb, a corridor that is a crucial alternative to the Strait of Hormuz, where Iran has been attacking ships.
Saudi Arabia is running low on missile interceptors and has asked France, Britain, Pakistan and Egypt to deploy air defense support to the region, regional officials told The Associated Press last month, with one noting that the U.S. has seen its own stock dwindle during the war with Iran.
This report has been corrected to show that the Egyptian killed in the strike was a woman, not a man.
Associated Press writers Victoria Eastwood in Cairo, Collin Binkley in Washington and Sally Abou AlJoud in Beirut contributed to this report.
This image from video obtained and verified by AP shows thick black smoke and flames rising from a fire at King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Friday, Oct. 9, 2026. (UGC via AP)
