Destabilization of a Nuclear Power Only a Step Away!
Re: Ominous Schemes Forebode Sectarian Fundamentalist "Jihad"
from the Mediterranean Sea to India!

Pakistani leader escapes attempt on life
By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer, July 6, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - A burst of gunfire went off as President Gen.
Pervez Musharraf's plane left a military base on Friday, in what one
official described as a failed assassination attempt.

Security forces quickly raided a nearby home with two anti-aircraft
guns on the roof, taking the owner in for questioning and searching
for a couple who rented the property this week, officials said.

"It was an unsuccessful effort by miscreants to target the
president's plane," a senior security official told AP. The
official, like those who described the raid on the house, spoke on
condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on
the record. "They fled quickly, and our security agencies are still
investigating."

The government, however, said it had yet to establish whether it was
an attack on Musharraf.

"At the moment there does not appear to be any linkeage between the
incident and the president's flight," the government said in a
statement.

The senior security official said Musharraf was aboard when the
plane came under fire, but insisted the aircraft was not within
range of the attempt in Rawalpindi, a garrison city south of the
capital where Musharraf narrowly escaped two attempts on his life in
2003.

Photographs taken from an overlooking building showed a large gun on
a tripod pointed skyward and a machine-gun next to a rusty satellite
TV dish and a plastic water tank on the flat roof of the two-story
building. Two anti-aircraft guns and a light machine gun were found
on the roof and the homeowner was taken in for questioning, three
officials told The Associated Press.

Kamal Shah, a senior ministry official, sidestepped a question at a
news conference about the lapse of time between Musharraf's takeoff
from the base and the firing.

"It is still a matter of investigation," Shah said. "We want to know
where the bullets went, whether they were directed toward some wall
or in the air."

The ministry said shell casings were recovered and only the machine
gun was fired.

The Pakistani president has come under increasing criticism for
decision to suspend the country's chief justice and his government
faces pressure in the capital, where the top-ranking cleric of a
radical mosque besieged by government forces rejected calls for an
unconditional surrender Friday, saying he and his die-hard followers
were ready for martyrdom.

A resident in the neighborhood near the air base, Mohammed Asif, 31,
said that he heard two loud bangs about "a minute or less than a
minute" apart and then saw a man firing an AK-47 rifle from an off-
white Suzuki car passing by his home.

"A small plane was flying at that time," Asif, a worker in
Rawalpindi's fruit market, told an AP reporter.

According to state-run Pakistan Television, Musharraf flew from the
air base Friday and later safely landed in Turbat, a remote
southwestern town where he was to inspect efforts to bring relief to
hundreds of thousands of people affected by recent catastrophic
flooding.

Khan Mohammed, a road construction worker, who was in a nearby
street, said he heard someone fire single shots and then a burst
from an automatic weapon but he said he did not know where the
gunfire originated or its target.

"It lasted for about five minutes," Mohammed said.

Mohammed said that he heard the roar of a plane overhead when the
firing occurred.

Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in its war on terrorism, narrowly escaped
two bombings within 11 days which targeted his limousine in December
2003. In the second blast, a suicide attack, 16 people died, mostly
police officers. Both attempts occurred in Rawalpindi.

Police later arrested dozens of people in connection with the
attacks on the general, and the detainees included low-ranking air
force personnel, an army soldier and civilians.

____

Associated Press writer Sadaqat Jan in Islamabad contributed to this
report.