Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped an assassination attempt yesterday when a bomb exploded just seconds after his motorcade had passed by.
"It was certainly a terrorist act and, certainly, it was me who was targeted," the military leader told reporters shortly after the attack. Mr Musharraf said the blast hit a bridge "just half a minute or one minute" after his motorcade passed it.
He had just returned from the southern city of Karachi, and the explosion occurred two kilometres from Islamabad International Airport near the neighboring northern city of Rawalpindi, where the military has its headquarters.
Mr Musharraf incensed Pakistani Islamic militant groups by ditching support for the Afghan Taliban and siding with the US-declared war on terrorism after the September 11th attacks on the United States in 2001.
Militants have been convicted for a previous attempt on the president's life.
"I have been saying that the greatest danger to our nation is not external, it is internal," he said. "It comes from religious and sectarian extremists, and this is a typical example of that," he said, adding, "we have to fight all these people with all our might."
The blast came on the same day that Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri arrived in Pakistan on a three-day visit during which she is expected to sign an anti-terrorism pact.