For­mer Pak­istani Prime Min­is­ter Im­ran Khan can be held for ques­tion­ing for eight days, a court ruled Wednes­day, a day af­ter the coun­try’s pop­u­lar op­po­si­tion leader was dragged from a court­room and ar­rest­ed.

His de­ten­tion set off clash­es be­tween his sup­port­ers and po­lice Tues­day, leav­ing at least four peo­ple dead. On Wednes­day, an­gry pro­test­ers stormed and set fire to a build­ing hous­ing Ra­dio Pak­istan in the north­west.

The 70-year-old politi­cian lost pow­er last year but re­mains the coun­try’s most pop­u­lar op­po­si­tion fig­ure. He is the sev­enth for­mer prime min­is­ter to be ar­rest­ed in Pak­istan. His dra­mat­ic ar­rest on Tues­day deep­ened the po­lit­i­cal tur­moil.

Two peo­ple were killed first, one Tues­day in the south­west­ern city of Quet­ta and an­oth­er in the north-west­ern city of Pe­shawar overnight. Two more were in clash­es with po­lice Wednes­day in Pe­shawar.

In east­ern Pun­jab province, where au­thor­i­ties said 157 po­lice of­fi­cers were in­jured in clash­es with Khan sup­port­ers, the lo­cal gov­ern­ment asked the army to step in and re­store or­der.

Pak­istan’s GEO tele­vi­sion broad­cast footage show­ing Khan ap­pear­ing be­fore a judge at a tem­po­rary court in­side a po­lice com­pound Wednes­day. The for­mer pre­mier was seen seat­ed in a chair, hold­ing doc­u­ments. He ap­peared calm but tired.

Ear­li­er, the Na­tion­al Ac­count­abil­i­ty Bu­reau re­quest­ed 14-day de­ten­tion of Khan, but the tri­bunal said au­thor­i­ties could keep him in their cus­tody for eight days.

Mean­while, Khan’s le­gal team chal­lenged his ar­rest be­fore the Is­lam­abad High Court, seek­ing his re­lease.

Al­so in Pe­shawar, Khan’s sup­port­ers raid­ed the build­ing hous­ing Ra­dio Pak­istan, dam­ag­ing equip­ment and set­ting fire to it, said po­lice of­fi­cial Naeem Khan. Some of the em­ploy­ees were trapped in­side, he said, and po­lice were try­ing to re­store or­der.

Khan’s Pak­istan Tehreek-e-In­saf par­ty had called for demon­stra­tors to re­main peace­ful, hours af­ter mobs an­gered over the dra­mat­ic ar­rest set fire to the res­i­dence of a top army gen­er­al in the east­ern city of La­hore.

When he was ar­rest­ed on Tues­day, Khan was ap­pear­ing in court on mul­ti­ple graft charges brought by Is­lam­abad po­lice. As he showed up in court, dozens of agents from the Na­tion­al Ac­count­abil­i­ty Bu­reau backed by para­mil­i­tary troops stormed the court­room, break­ing win­dows af­ter Khan’s guards re­fused to open the door.

Khan’s sup­port­ers at­tacked the mil­i­tary’s head­quar­ters in the gar­ri­son city of Rawalpin­di near the cap­i­tal, Is­lam­abad, but did not reach the main build­ing hous­ing the of­fices of army chief Gen. Asim Mu­nir.

Oth­er demon­stra­tors tried to reach the prime min­is­ter’s res­i­dence in La­hore but were dri­ven off by ba­ton-wield­ing in po­lice. Oth­ers at­tacked ve­hi­cles car­ry­ing troops and hit armed sol­diers with sticks. So far, po­lice and sol­diers have not fired at pro­test­ers.

The mil­i­tary has not com­ment­ed on the at­tacks on its fa­cil­i­ties. None of the lead­ers from Khan’s par­ty de­nounced the at­tacks on the mil­i­tary.

A po­lice state­ment on Wednes­day said of­fi­cers in east­ern Pun­jab province ar­rest­ed 945 Khan sup­port­ers since Tues­day — in­clud­ing Asad Umar, a se­nior leader from Khan’s par­ty. Dozens of Khan sup­port­ers were al­so de­tained in Is­lam­abad, Karachi, Pe­shawar and else­where.

Shah Mah­mood Qureshi, se­nior vice pres­i­dent from Khan’s par­ty, ap­pealed for peace­ful demon­stra­tions Wednes­day, urg­ing fol­low­ers: “Don’t dam­age pub­lic prop­er­ty, don’t at­tack of­fices, as we are peace lovers.” He said the par­ty is con­sid­er­ing chal­leng­ing Khan’s ar­rest in the Supreme Court.

By morn­ing, po­lice said some 2,000 pro­test­ers still sur­round­ed the fire-dam­aged res­i­dence in La­hore of Lt. Gen. Salman Fayyaz Ghani, a top re­gion­al com­man­der. They chant­ed slo­gans at the mil­i­tary, in­clud­ing “Khan is our red line and you have crossed it.” Ghani and his fam­i­ly mem­bers were moved to a safer place when the mob on Tues­day first at­tacked their sprawl­ing house.

Po­lice de­ployed in force across the coun­try, and placed ship­ping con­tain­ers on a road lead­ing to the sprawl­ing po­lice com­pound in Is­lam­abad where Khan is be­ing held and where he ap­peared be­fore a judge at the tem­po­rary court placed there for se­cu­ri­ty rea­sons, ac­cord­ing to the gov­ern­ment.

Amid vi­o­lence, Pak­istan’s telecom­mu­ni­ca­tion au­thor­i­ty on Tues­day blocked so­cial me­dia, in­clud­ing Twit­ter. The gov­ern­ment al­so sus­pend­ed in­ter­net ser­vice in Is­lam­abad and oth­er cities. Class­es at some pri­vate schools were can­celled for Wednes­day.

Rights group Amnesty In­ter­na­tion­al said it was alarmed by re­ports of Pak­istani au­thor­i­ties block­ing ac­cess to mo­bile in­ter­net net­works and so­cial me­dia — Twit­ter, Face­book, and YouTube are sus­pend­ed for a sec­ond day. Amnesty urged au­thor­i­ties to show re­straint, say­ing clash­es be­tween law en­force­ment and Khan’s sup­port­ers risk hu­man rights vi­o­la­tions.

The Na­tion­al Ac­count­abil­i­ty Bu­reau has de­tained and in­ves­ti­gat­ed for­mer of­fi­cials, in­clud­ing for­mer prime min­is­ters, politi­cians and re­tired mil­i­tary of­fi­cers. But some view the NAB as a tool used by those in pow­er, es­pe­cial­ly the mil­i­tary, to crack down on po­lit­i­cal op­po­nents.

When Khan was in pow­er, his gov­ern­ment ar­rest­ed Shah­baz Sharif, then the op­po­si­tion leader, through the NAB. Sharif was fac­ing mul­ti­ple cor­rup­tion cas­es when he man­aged to oust Khan in a 2022 no-con­fi­dence vote. The charges were lat­er dropped, cit­ing a lack of ev­i­dence.

Prime Min­is­ter Sharif re­turned to Pak­istan on Wednes­day from a U.K. trip and was to hold a Cab­i­net meet­ing on the lat­est de­vel­op­ments. His broth­er, Nawaz Sharif, who al­so served as prime min­is­ter, was ar­rest­ed sev­er­al times on cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions.

In March, po­lice stormed Khan’s La­hore res­i­dence, seek­ing to ar­rest him in a cor­rup­tion case re­lat­ed to hid­ing in­come from the sale of of­fi­cial gifts.

Lat­er Wednes­day, Khan ap­peared in a dif­fer­ent court­room at the high se­cu­ri­ty court and was in­dict­ed in the lin­ger­ing graft case, plead­ing not guilty, lo­cal me­dia said.

As vi­o­lence spread, diplo­mats from var­i­ous coun­tries and com­mon peo­ple in Pak­istan stayed home. The U.S. Em­bassy in Is­lam­abad can­celled all its Wednes­day con­sular ap­point­ments fol­low­ing Khan’s ar­rest and is­sued a na­tion­wide alert, telling Amer­i­cans to re­view their per­son­al se­cu­ri­ty plans and avoid large crowds. —IS­LAM­ABAD (AP)

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Sto­ry by MU­NIR AHMED and RI­AZAT BUTT | As­so­ci­at­ed Press

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Ri­az Khan in Pe­shawar and Babar Dog­ar in La­hore, Pak­istan, con­tributed to this sto­ry.