ISLAMABAD, 7 July 2007 — Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf escaped an assassination attempt as gunmen fired shots after an aircraft carrying him took off from a military base yesterday.
The apparently crude assassination attempt involving anti-aircraft guns like those used by the Taleban, has added to the sense of crisis enveloping the country, officials said.
The incident happened as the aircraft took off from a military airbase, but the shots did not hit the aircraft or harm Musharraf, a key US ally who has escaped several Al-Qaeda-linked bids to kill him.
Pakistani military spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad earlier denied that the shots had targeted Musharraf’s plane. He also denied reports that a rocket was fired.
But intelligence officials dealing directly with the incident were quoted by news agencies as insisting that Musharraf’s plane was the target of the gunfire.
It was unclear if the incident was linked to an army siege of the Red Mosque in the capital. However, it underlines concerns about the threat posed by militants to Pakistan’s stability and role as a key US ally. Musharraf was flying from Chaklala Air Base in Rawalpindi yesterday morning when shots rang out from a neighborhood that lies directly under the flight path, officials said. “It was an unsuccessful effort by miscreants to target the president’s plane,” a senior security official said on condition of anonymity.
The plane later landed safely in the town of Turbat for a visit to Pakistan’s flood-ravaged south. If confirmed, the attack would be at least the fourth attempt on Musharraf’s life since his decision to side with the United States in its war on terror enraged Taleban and Al-Qaeda-linked radicals in Pakistan.
Within minutes, police and troops had surrounded a house in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad. Officials said two anti-aircraft guns and a light machine gun were found on the rooftop. Photos taken from an overlooking building showed a large gun on a tripod pointed skyward and a machine gun next to a satellite dish and a plastic water tank on the roof of the two-story building.
Kamal Shah, a senior Interior Ministry official, said only the machine gun had been fired and that several shell cases had been recovered along with the weapons.
He declined to say how much time had elapsed between Musharraf’s takeoff and the shooting, which witnesses said rang out midmorning.
“At the moment there does not appear to be any linkage between the incident and the president’s flight,” a ministry statement said, but added: “A definite answer will only be available on completion of the investigation.”
The house lies under the flight path of the main runway used by both the military base and the international airport. Passenger jets thundered overhead as police and soldiers swarmed the area. A resident in the neighborhood, Mohammed Asif, 31, said that he heard two loud bangs about “a minute or less than a minute” apart.
— With input from agencies
