RAWALPINDI, 31 October 2007 — A man killed seven people when he blew himself up near Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s army office in Rawalpindi as the president held crucial security talks inside.

The man set off explosives strapped to his body when stopped from reaching a police post half a kilometer from where Musharraf was meeting top government officials to discuss a recent spate of attacks, including a bid to kill former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

“It was a suicide attack,” Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid told Arab News.

The twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad have been on high security alert for the past few days after fighting between supporters of rebel cleric Maulana Fazlullah and the army claimed scores of lives in the Swat Valley.

Musharraf had been meeting provincial governors and chief ministers at his office to discuss the deteriorating security situation in the country ahead of elections due in January.

Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz said three policemen were among the dead. “He wanted to get past our security cordon but we were successful in stopping him. We were alert and we will remain alert,” Aziz told reporters at the scene of the attack.

Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema said seven people were killed and 14 others wounded in the attack. Remains of the bomber’s head were found at the scene and he was believed to be aged between 19 and 23.

The site of the blast is also directly outside the office of the chairman of Pakistan’s joint chiefs of staff, but Cheema denied the bomber meant to target the army. “It appears to be an attack targeting police,” he said.

Bomb disposal squads scooped up fragments of the bomber’s head and face on a white sheet, and sifted through the debris to identify the type of explosives used in the blast.

Several people were wounded when the blast hit a minibus, causing it to crash, while a mangled, blood-spattered bicycle was left lying in the road. Paramedics were seen removing several bodies.

The attack compounds the general turmoil facing Musharraf, who himself has escaped at least three major assassination attempts blamed on militants, all of them in Rawalpindi.

Two suicide bombers also blew themselves up in the city, the heart of Pakistan’s military establishment, on Sept. 4 this year, killing 25 people. Most of the dead were in a bus taking intelligence officials to work.

— Additional input from agencies