A network of Kashmiri and Afghan militants was behind the latest assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf, Pakistani officials said today.
Two suicide car bombers tried to ram explosives-laden vehicles into Musharraf's limousine on Thursday in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, 20 km (12 miles) from the capital Islamabad.
Information Minister Sheikh Rasheed Ahmed said investigators were close to arresting those behind the attack.
"It's a huge network of terrorists having tentacles from Kashmir to Afghanistan. They also have international ties," he told reporters.
A senior government official said, on condition of anonymity, that one of the suicide bombers was from a Pakistani part of Kashmir, while the other was an Afghan who carried a fake Pakistani identity card.
The fake identity card showed his address to be in a town of North West Frontier Province, bordering Afghanistan, he said.
Fifteen people were killed and 45 wounded in the attack, the second against Musharraf in less than a fortnight. A powerful bomb exploded moments after his motorcade crossed a bridge on the same Rawalpindi road on December 14th.
President Musharraf, a staunch ally of the United States in the war on terror, blamed Islamic extremists for the attacks and vowed not to falter in fight against terrorism.
Mr Ahmed said several people had been arrested in the crackdown aimed at the masterminds of the attack.
"We have entered the network," he said, without elaborating.
Witnesses in Rawalakot in Pakistan's part of Kashmir said authorities arrested at least three suspects from a nearby village in a raid before dawn on Friday.
They said the Kashmiri suicide bomber was from the village.
Hardline Islamists are furious with General Musharraf for supporting Washington's crackdown in which Pakistan arrested hundreds of al Qaeda militants and handed them over to the United States.