Musharraf Escapes Attempt on His Life

Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan’s president, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt Sunday when a bomb exploded just seconds after his motorcade had passed a bridge in this city near the capital, Islamabad. No one was hurt.

Military trucks and soldiers immediately cordoned off the area around the bridge as bomb experts and other investigators sifted through rubble, witnesses said. The private GEO TV network reported that the blast was caused by a remote-controlled bomb, but officials could not immediately confirm that.

“There was an explosion just half a minute or one minute after we crossed,” Musharraf told state television. “I felt the explosion in my car. That’s all I know except of course it was a terrorist act and it certainly was me who was targeted.”

Information Minister Sheik Rashid Ahmed said the president was returning to his home at Army House in Rawalpindi from Islamabad International Airport after a visit to the southern city of Karachi. Rawalpindi is where the military has its headquarters.

Musharraf, the army chief, came to power in 1999 in a bloodless coup, toppling an elected government.

He drew the wrath of hard-line Islamic groups after he cut off support to the Taliban regime of neighboring Afghanistan and backed the U.S.-led war against Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda terrorist network after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Militants have been convicted for a previous attempt on the president’s life.

“I have been saying that the greatest danger to our nation is not external, it is internal,” Musharraf said. “It comes from religious and sectarian extremists, and this is a typical example of that .... We have to fight all these people with all our might.”

Talat Masood, a former senior defense official, said it was too early to say who was behind Sunday’s attack but that the most likely suspects were hard-liners opposed to Musharraf’s policy on Afghanistan and his efforts to reform Islamic schools that have become hotbeds of radicalism.

“I think these are the forces who want to eliminate him,” Masood said.