KARACHI, 25 May 2004 — Pakistani police said they have smashed a gang of extremists behind an attempt to kill President Pervez Musharraf in 2002 after arresting six men in a dramatic shootout yesterday.

Six members of the Harkatul Mujahedeen Al-Alaami organization were captured in a raid in the southern port city of Karachi early yesterday, the chief of Karachi’s police investigation department Fayyaz Leghari said.

The arrests meant most of the group, also blamed for a deadly suicide attack on the US Consulate in Karachi two years ago, were now in custody.

“We have been able to break the group’s network. There may be a few more but they are on the run,” Leghari told AFP.

The six were captured in a hail of gunfire, grenades and tear gas during a violent raid on a house in a suburb of Karachi. The suspects threw grenades and fired guns at police leading the raid, police said.

Their hide-out was the group’s operational headquarters and was used for “operational briefings, Leghari said in a later statement.

The raid was launched on a tipoff from another Al-Alaami member, Kamran Atif, who was captured last week.

Atif is believed to have pressed the detonator which failed to blow up a remote-controlled car bomb parked on a highway where Musharraf’s motorcade was passing in April 2002. The detonator malfunctioned.

Stashed in their hide-out were parcel bombs, telephone bombs, pager bombs and explosives, as well as collections of militant literature.

The six later admitted they were planning a suicide attack on Karachi’s main prison to try and free several colleagues and plotting to kill senior police officers through remote control bombs, Leghari said..

The latest arrests bring to 30 the number of al-Alaami activists arrested in the past two years.

“We have arrested their planners as well as key executors and have broken their backbone,” Leghari said.

A key Al-Alaami member known as Mustafa is alleged to have supplied the suicide bomber who blew up an explosives-packed vehicle outside the US Consulate in June 2002, killing 12 Pakistanis.

Mustafa was arrested with eight other Al-Alaami militants last month.

Al-Alaami is a splinter group of the outlawed militant outfit Harkatul Mujahedeen, which fights Indian rule in disputed Kashmir.

It was formed in 2001 by militants who returned to Pakistan from Afghanistan in late 2001 after training under or fighting alongside the hard-line Taleban regime.

Four Al-Alaami members were tried and convicted last year over the failed April 2002 bid to kill Musharraf. They are in prison serving life terms.

Last December Musharraf narrowly escaped two more assassination attempts which he said were masterminded by the Al-Qaeda terror network.

Blast Injures 15 Security Personnel in Southwest Pakistan

Fifteen Pakistani soldiers and police were injured by a remote-controlled bicycle bomb in the southwest city Quetta yesterday, police said.

“A remote-controlled device planted on a bicycle went off when a truck carrying 15 personnel of Frontier Corps and Balochistan Reserve Police passed by,” police officer Muhammad Gulzar told AFP.

The injured were being treated in hospital in Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province. “Their injuries are not life threatening,” Gulzar said.