The army commander in the Pakistani city of Karachi narrowly escaped assassination today when gunmen attacked his convoy with gunfire and a bomb, killing at least ten people.
Seven soldiers, two policemen and one civilian were killed.
A military spokesman denied that the city's army corps commander, Lieutenant-General Ahsan Saleem Hayat, had been the target of the attack and said he was safe. "The attack was not on the motorcade of the corps commander; he had reached his office safely by the time of the attack," he said.
But a security official and a senior military officer, who did not want to be identified, said the attack had been on Hayat's motorcade and his driver had been wounded.
"The blast occurred when the corps commander's jeep was approaching," the military officer said on the condition of anonymity. "It was a well-planned ambush. The corps commander is safe, but his driver has been wounded."
The violence was just the latest to rock the volatile port city of Karachi after more 60 people were killed last month in violence involving rival Muslims sects and political foes.
It comes six months after two attempts to assassinate president and army chief General Pervez Musharraf in Rawalpindi near Islamabad in December and underscores the difficulty he faces as a key ally in the US-led war on terror.
The attack occurred about 400 metres from the heavily fortified US consulate, which has been the target of Islamic militant attack in the past.
The attempts on Gen Musharraf have been blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants enraged by his decision to back Washington after the September 11th attacks in 2001. They have staged repeated bloody attacks in Pakistan since.
The Karachi attack coincided with a fresh round of fighting between the military and al Qaeda-linked militants in a remote tribal region bordering Afghanistan in which dozens were killed.
The military said 20 militants were killed in the clashes near the mountain town of Wana that started yesterday, many of them foreigners, including Chechens and Uzbeks.