Shots Fired At Pakistan Ruler's Plane

Shots were fired from a house near Islamabad's international airport, while a plane carrying General Pervez Musharraf, the military ruler, flew overhead, reports CBS News' Farhan Bokhari.

The attempt on Friday came as a standoff between hard-line Islamists from a mosque known as the "Lal" (Red) mosque in Islamabad and Musharraf's regime entered its third day. Troops rocked the complex with gunfire and explosions but appeared to be holding back from a potentially bloody final assault.

A senior government official said Musharraf flew safely to Turbat, a town in the southwestern Baluchistan province, to visit victims from floods caused by torrential rains on Pakistan's southern coastline along the Indian ocean.

But he also confirmed that shots were fired while Musharraf's plane was en route to Turbat.

"This seemed to be aimed at the president's plane. Fortunately, no harm was done," said the government official, who spoke to CBS News on the condition that he would not be named. The Pakistani government officially denied that Musharraf was in any way in danger during this time.

Security officials subsequently found two weapons, a light machinegun and an anti-aircraft gun, on the rooftop of the house from which the shots came. But there were no arrests, as a couple living in the house had already escaped, added the government official.

A resident in the neighborhood, Mohammed Asif, 31, said that he heard two loud bangs about "a minute or less than a minute" apart and then saw a man firing an AK-47 rifle from an off-white Suzuki car passing by his home.

"A small plane was flying at that time," Asif, a worker in Rawalpindi's fruit market, told an Associated Press reporter.

Khan Mohammed, a road construction worker, who was in a nearby street, said he heard someone fire single shots and then a burst from an automatic weapon but he said he didn't know where the gunfire originated or what it was aimed at.

"It lasted for about five minutes," Mohammed said.

Mohammed said that he heard the roar of a flying plane when the firing occurred.

The attempt was a powerful reminder of the threat to Musharraf, who has lived under unprecedented security since surviving two al Qaeda-backed assassination attempts within 11 days in December 2003, reports Bokhari.

One of those attempts was made when a bomb planted on a bridge on the road leading up to Musharraf's home blew up just after his motorcade passed, while in the second attempt, a truck laden with explosives and driven by a suicide bomber tried to ram in to his car. Sixteen other people, mostly police officers, were killed.

The mosque and an adjoining seminary for Islamic women known as "Jamia Hifza" have been at the center of the dispute with the government, calling for the imposition of Islamic laws across Pakistan. Islamists at the two sites have been protesting since January against the government for its decision to demolish mosques built on illegally-occupied government land.

"We will not surrender. We will be martyred, but we will not surrender," Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the top-ranking cleric holed up inside the mosque complex, told a television station. "We are more determined now."

The government said troops would not storm the mosque while women and children were inside.

"For the Pakistan army to go in is no problem, but safety is our foremost objective," government spokesman Tariq Azim said. "We don't want to harm any innocent lives. We already know that these people are being kept as hostages."

Azim told Dawn News Television that Ghazi's talk about martyrdom was a bluff, noting his brother Maulana Abdul Aziz, who had headed the mosque, said the same thing and then was arrested trying to sneak out of the complex disguised as a woman.

Troops surrounded the mosque on Wednesday, a day after tensions between government security forces and mosque followers erupted into deadly street clashes. The violence has killed 19 people.

Militant students had streamed out of the mosque Tuesday to confront security forces sent there after the kidnapping of six alleged Chinese prostitutes.

The brief abduction drew a protest from Beijing, and proved to be the last straw following a string of provocations by the mosque stretching back six months.

Also Friday, at least six soldiers were killed in a suicide attack in Dir, a town in northwestern Pakistan, when a suicide bicyclist armed with explosives struck a jeep.

Pakistan, a key ally of the United States in its campaign against terrorism, has deployed about 90,000 troops in its tribal regions bordering Afghanistan in an effort to flush out Taliban and al Qaeda remnants.

The frontier region has been the scene of dozens of military operations against local and foreign militants after Pakistan decided to side with Washington in its anti-terror fight following the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.