Blast near Pakistan leader's office

A suspected suicide attacker blew himself up at a police checkpoint in Pakistan this morning, killing at least two people and injuring several others, police said.

The blast occurred in the city of Rawalpindi, about 1.5 miles from the headquarters of the Pakistan army and the office of president General Pervez Musharraf.

Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi said Musharraf was safe inside Army House at the time.

Mohammed Khaled, a city police official, said the attack seemed to have been carried out by a suicide bomber at a police checkpoint on a main road in the city.

Khaled said two people were killed and several others injured. Police officers and passengers on a vehicle that was crossing the checkpoint were among the victims, he said.

Pakistan has been rocked by a string of suicide attacks mostly blamed on Islamic militants battling security forces near the Afghan border.

A suicide attack on the homecoming parade of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on October 18 in the southern city of Karachi killed more than 140 people.

In Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital Islamabad, two blasts on September 4 killed 25 people and wounded more than 60, many of them on a defence ministry bus.