Pakistan general escapes assassination bid

A SENIOR Pakistani general narrowly escaped assassination yesterday following a gun attack that left nine people dead.

Gunmen in buildings on opposite sides of a main road in Karachi city centre opened fire on a convoy escorting Lieutenant General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, the military commander in the volatile city.

Soldiers returned fire, and the gunmen fled in at least one car, witnesses said.

“Hayat was the target and he escaped the assassination attempt,” army spokesman Major General Shaukat Sultan said. Lt Gen Hayat’s guard and driver were injured in the attack.

Maj Gen Sultan said that six soldiers, two policemen and one civilian were killed in the attack near the Clifton Bridge, which is about 500 yards from the US Consulate.

A bag, found on the road after the gun battle, was thrown into a field by police and exploded. No one was injured in that blast.

Security officials later found another suspicious bag with a bomb inside. It was safely defused.

An intelligence official said that when Lt Gen Hayat changed cars after the attack, his shirt collar and trousers were bloodstained.

However, Maj Gen Sultan added that the commander was “perfectly all right” and had attended a meeting at his office following the incident.

Lt Gen Hayat is the top military official in Pakistan’s largest city of 14 million people. Over the past month, Karachi has been rocked by terrorist attacks and sectarian unrest that has killed dozens of people.

Karachi has been the scene of numerous bombings and shootings blamed on Islamic militants since President Pervez Musharraf threw his support behind the US-led war against al-Qaida and the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan in late 2001.

The attempt on Lt Gen Hayat’s life follows two failed assassination attempts in December against Mr Musharraf in Rawalpindi. The President blamed al-Qaida for those attacks, and a number of renegade military personnel have also been implicated.

Army spokesman Maj Gen Sultan refused to speculate on who could be behind yesterday’s attack or whether the assailants had links to al-Qaida.

“It is too early to say who could be behind the attack in Karachi,” he said. “But, definitely, it is a terrorist attack and those people who want to destabilise the country are behind it.”

Security agencies put airports in three cities on alert after the attack, following a “hijacking threat”.

“On intelligence reports, we put Karachi, Islamabad and Lahore airports under high alert in which we take all anti-hijacking measures,” said Major Riaz Ahmed, a spokesman for the force responsible for security at airports in Pakistan.