Musharraf shifted to his farmhouse

ISLAMABAD: Another symbolic light explosion occurred on the route of former military ruler Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf when his motorcade was heading towards his Chak Shahzad farmhouse in the wee hours of Thursday, police sources said.

Pervez Musharraf has been shifted to his farmhouse in the federal capital from the military hospital where he was under treatment.But the question as to how the terrorist outfit was aware about the route and the time of shifting of the former president from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) to his farmhouse and how easily the terrorists planted the explosive device on the route of the man facing open threats from the Taliban remained unanswered.

The former military ruler, who is on trial for treason, narrowly escaped an assassination attempt as a bomb blew up shortly before his convoy was due to pass from the Murree Road via crossing through the Faizabad flyover at about 2:00am, police said.

The bomb was planted on Musharraf’s route from the AFIC where he had been staying since January to his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad, the police maintained.No terrorist outfit has claimed responsibility so far, while nobody was injured in the explosion.

It was interesting to note that the venue of the explosion and the power of explosive was different when this correspondent inquired from different police officers.Half-a-kilogramme of explosive device was planted at about 300 metres from the Faizabad flyover to the Rawal Dam Chowk at the greenbelt, about 15 feet off the footpath, the AIG (Operations), Sultan Azam Temuri, said when contacted by this scribe for comments.

“It was an IED (improvised explosive device) attached with a nine volt battery; it was linked with a time device and operated manually and it was not a remote controlled device,” Temuri maintained.

The police said the former president was taken to his farmhouse at about 2:00am when the explosion occurred about 10 minutes before he was scheduled to pass through the location of the explosion, adding that he was later brought to the farmhouse via an alternative route. The bomb disposal squad had cleared the area after the blast.“Nobody was injured in the blast,” he said, adding Musharraf was the intended target. It was the fourth attempt on the ex-general’s life while three had occurred when he was in power.