Suicide blast kills 7 near Pak army HQ

A suicide bomber blew himself up close to where Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was holding talks at army headquarters in the garrison city of Rawalpindi yesterday, killing seven people, officials said.
The blast happened at a police checkpost a less than a kilometre (half a mile) from where Musharraf was holding talks with top government officials about a spate of attacks, including a recent bid to kill Benazir Bhutto.
General Musharraf, a key US ally in the "war on terror", was safe inside his army headquarters at Camp Office at the time of the bombing, his spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.
"It was a suicide attack. The area is sensitive -- we don't know what the exact target was," Railways Minister Sheikh Rashid, a close aide to Musharraf, told AFP.
Rawalpindi police chief Saud Aziz the bomber approached the checkpoint near Musharraf's office on foot and then detonated explosives strapped to his body.
"He wanted to get past our security cordon but we were successful in stopping him. We were alert and we will remain alert," Aziz told reporters.
Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told reporters that seven people were killed and 14 wounded in the attack. The bomber's head was found at the scene and he was believed to be aged between 19 and 23, he added.
The site of the attack is also near the office of the chairman of Pakistan's joint chiefs of staff, but Cheema denied the bomber meant to target the army.
"It appears to be an attack targeting police," he said.
Paramedics removed bodies from the scene, while bomb disposal squads were sifting through the debris to identify type of the explosives used in the blast, an AFP photographer at the scene said.
Several civilians were wounded when the blast hit a minibus, causing it to crash, while a mangled, blood-spattered bicycle was left lying in the road.
Rashid, the railways minister, said there were reports up to three possible suicide attackers had managed to enter Rawalpindi and neighbouring Islamabad in recent days.
Military ruler Musharraf has escaped at least three assassination attempts blamed on Islamic militants, the most recent being in July when his plane was fired on as it took off from Rawalpindi.
He also survived two bombings in Rawalpindi in December 2003.
Two suicide bombers blew themselves up in the city, the heart of the country's military establishment, on September 4 this year, killing 25 people. Most of those killed were in a bus taking intelligence officials to work.
The latest incident came less than two weeks after twin suicide attacks in the southern city of Karachi killed 139 people during a procession to welcome former premier Benazir Bhutto home from eight years in exile.
Pakistani officials have implicated Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network in the Karachi blasts, but Benazir Bhutto says she believes rogue security and government agents may also have been involved.
Pakistan has suffered a string of attacks since security forces raided the pro-Taliban Red Mosque in Islamabad in July, piling pressure on Musharraf as he struggles with a political crisis ahead of general elections set for January.
Government forces are maintaining a tense ceasefire with a Taliban-style cleric in the northwestern Swat Valley, once a thriving tourist area, after clashes at the weekend that left around 60 militants dead.
The troubles in Swat have reinforced fears of a spillover from Pakistan's lawless tribal areas bordering Afghanistan, where thousands of al-Qaeda and Taliban militants fled after the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001.