Pakistan president avoids bomb blast

A bomb exploded minutes after a motorcade carrying the Pakistani president passed a road near the capital today.

No-one was hurt, officials said.

The blast damaged a bridge in Rawalpindi, about 10 miles from the capital Islamabad, but President General Pervez Musharraf was not harmed, state television PTV reported.

Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said the president was returning to his home at Army House in Rawalpindi from the city’s airport after a visit to the southern city of Karachi.

Ahmed said it was a bomb explosion and an investigation had begun.

Maj Gen Shaukat Sultan, a military spokesman, confirmed that the explosion happened soon after the president’s vehicle passed.

“His cavalcade had passed safely,” he said.

GEO TV, a private network, reported the blast happened 10 minutes after Musharraf passed the spot in Rawalpindi, the capital’s sister city.

Musharraf, the army chief, toppled an elected government in 1999 in a bloodless coup.

There have been at least two past attempts to assassinate the Pakistani leader.

Both attacks failed, one when a car packed with explosives failed to detonate as Musharraf passed on a congested road in the southern port city of Karachi. Five militants were arrested for involvement in that attack.

Musharraf earned the wrath of hardline Islamic groups after he choose to abandon the Taliban regime of neighbouring Afghanistan and back the US-led war against Osama bin Laden’s al Qaida regime.