Paris, Jan 17 (UNI) Pakistan's flag carrier has drawn widespread criticism for putting out an advertisement that showed a plane flying towards the Eiffel Tower, media reports said.
The ad was meant to promote the resumption of Pakistan International Airlines' flights to the French capital and had the caption "Paris, we're coming today," the BBC reported on Friday.
Some social media users noted the ad's resemblance to the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001.
"Is this an advertisement or a threat?" one user wrote on X. Another called for the company to "fire your marketing manager".
According to media reports, the image has been viewed more than 21 million times on X since it was published last week and has drawn swift backlash.
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation into the matter, while Deputy Prime Minister Ishaq Dar has also criticised the ad, Pakistan's Geo News reported.
The 9/11 attacks saw hijackers crash passenger jets into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington DC, killing nearly 3,000 people.
The alleged mastermind of the attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, was arrested in Pakistan in 2003, the report said.
Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al-Qaeda extremist network which planned the attacks, was killed by US troops in Pakistan in 2011.
Pakistani journalist Omar Quraishi said PIA's ad left him "truly speechless."
"Do they not know about the 9/11 tragedy - which used planes to attack buildings? Did they not think that this would be perceived in similar fashion," he wrote on X.
The airline has not commented on the incident. The PIA, however, is no stranger to controversy.
Some X users pointed out that in 1979, the airline published an advertisement showing a passenger jet's shadow over the twin towers, the report added.
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