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| PAF officer arrested for attempt on Musharraf's life | | | London, Nov 5 Several young officers with the Pakistani Air Force with access to President Pervez Musharraf's innermost security circle were among 50 people arrested for trying to assassinate him soon afte he returned from a visit to the US and Britain in late September, a report said here today.
The rocket strike was aimed at the President's high-security personal residence-office in Rawalpindi.
"About 50 people are being held on suspicion of involvement in the September attack, which involved a battery of Russian-made 107 m projectiles launched by a signal from a mobile phone," Pakistani intelligence sources were quoted as saying by The Sunday Telegraph.
"Alarmingly, many are understood to be young officers serving in the Pakistan Air Force, some of whom have access to high-security zones of the presidential offices, parliament and the intelligence service," they said.
Although interrogations have not revealed any of them to have links with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, they are none the less believed to have acted out of growing anger at Gen Musharraf's alliance with America in its war on terror.
One official said that while the rocket strike itself had been relatively amateurish, it would have probably been lethal had the plotters been assisted beforehand by an Islamic terrorist group.
Although the president was not hurt, the attempt demonstrated the political instability engulfing his nation, which was heightened last week by his government's bombing of a madrassa in north-west Pakistan, the report said.
A rattled Gen Musharraf has called a meeting with his closest confidants this week to review personal security. |
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