Suspected Islamic militants fired at an aircraft carrying Pervez Musharraf, President of Pakistan, yesterday as it took off from a military airbase.

The attack took place as Abdul Rashid Ghazi, the leader of a Taleban-style movement, pledged to fight to the death against troops who are laying siege to a radical mosque in the centre of Islamabad.

The gunmen who fired at General Musharraf’s aircraft used an improvised antiaircraft gun mounted on the rooftop of an apartment building close to the Chaklala airbase in Rawalpindi, the seat of Pakistan’s military headquarters. The shots did not hit the aircraft and General Musharraf continued his journey to Turbat, where he visited flood victims.

Major-General Waheed Arshad, the Pakistani military’s chief spokesman, denied that the shots were fired at the President’s plane. But intelligence officials confirmed that General Musharraf’s flight was the target.

Security agencies seized two long-barrelled antiaircraft guns similar to those used by the Taleban in Afghanistan. Militants from the Lal Masjid, or Red Mosque, had claimed responsibility, according to one TV station. The gunmen appear to have known the timing of the President’s flight, which is supposedly kept secret.

General Musharraf, who invoked the ire of Islamic extremists by aligning himself with the US after 9/11, narrowly escaped two assassination attempts in Rawalpindi in 2003.

The bloody stand-off at the besieged Lal Masjid continued last night after Mr Ghazi, the cleric leading the militants holed up inside, said that he would rather die than surrender. He and his radical followers were ready to achieve “martyrdom”, he said.

Mr Ghazi assumed command of the Red Mosque militants after Maulana Abdul Aziz, his elder brother and chief cleric of the mosque, was captured by the security forces as he tried to slip away wearing a woman’s burka.

Security officials claim that Arab, Afghan and Central Asian nationals are among the diehard militants inside. A young seminary student who managed to escape said that many of them spoke in Arabic.

Yesterday many parents whose young children remain inside the mosque waited anxiously behind security barriers. A small number were allowed to approach the mosque but came under fire as they reached the entrance. Government troops rocked the complex with gunfire and explosions but appeared to be holding back from a potentially bloody final assault. Pakistan officials said that they were trying to avoid a bloodbath, involving women and children inside the mosque, that could damage General Musharraf’s embattled administration.

Yesterday Islamic militants killed four Pakistani army personnel, including two officers, in a suicide attack on a military convoy in North West Frontier Province. The attack occurred in Chakdra district, which has been a stronghold of Islamic extremists who support the Red Mosque campaign to enforce a Taleban-like Sharia system.

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