Pakistani leader escapes attempt on life.Shots fired at President Plane:

Pakistani leader escapes attempt on life By MUNIR AHMAD, Associated Press Writer
10 minutes ago



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.

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

And the people involved, later said that, they actually wern't shooting at the plane, but actually waited after the plane had passed, before shooting.
Yeah, it was just a little target practice into the air.

They will pay for it big time.
Army going to rip them apart.

Wow Musharraf is going all out with publicity stunts.

And you know that for a fact ?

So it wasn't third time lucky for the wannabe assasins

I doubt any Pakistani has been fed any facts in the last couple of years.

damn.........i wish he was dead....he was really good in the begining..now i'm not a fan of him and his policies and it has nothing to do with lal masjid drama

Well the Director General ISPR was just on GEO and he said that it was just speculation that it was aimed at the president's plane.

That was idiotic...and you wander why there are 'Kill ****' chants on the glasgow walls.

i don't support terrorist...and i don't support dictators....both need to die....and kill pakis on glasgow walls have nothing to do with musharaf being dead

THE MOTIVE is there....killing. If I saw S.Rushdie on the street, and even if I had a gun with me and there was no law, I wouldn't harm him...its not the Islamic way. Thats my two cent. Matters not if it is done to Luke Skywalker or PJ Mir, it is killing and none need to die, why kill??

how about a dictator....so people should suffer till god takes musharaf's life

The Dictator can be overturned using the power of the word...not by the bluntness of a weapon, or its projectile.

i don't know if any dictator was overturned by using the "power of WoRd" lets be realistic here... that's not possible

Those who live by sword die by the sword. Mushy took over illegally by force. More than likely he will be disposed of illegally by force.

so close... yet so far.

Jissay Allah Rakhay - ussay kon chakhay....

Not possible will breed possible..

i would like to take the same optimism drug that u are on....

shot at sight every mullah is the only solution or it's only going to get worse.

An opportunity gone a begging. However this is just Masala from Mush spin doctors, nothing more nothing less. I won't want him to be killed because that would create more havoc, but yes i would want him to be kicked out of power BY THE PEOPLE OF PAKISTAN and then a Saddam Hussain type trial.

he's gotta be a lucky man to survive so many times....God must really want him to lead our country...or is that what he wants us to think?

Array chorro yaar - Benazir, Sharif etc to sub dandanatay phir rahain hain aur Mush kee hee trial nazar aati hai aap logon ko?

Lets face it, all these so called leaders are a mere reflection of our society - where might is right - lets accept this fact and stop acting holier than thou.