Two grilled over Pak airport attack

ISLAMABAD: Pakistani investigators on Wednesday were quizzing two suspects after an Islamic militant was killed by his own hand grenade in a brazen attack on Islamabad international airport, officials said.

The attack on late Tuesday was the fifth in less than two weeks in Pakistan, raising fears that Taliban militants near the Afghan border are trying to embarrass President Pervez Musharraf, a key US ally, for a military crackdown on their camps.

The two suspects and the attacker were in a car which drove to the airport carpark, where he exchanged gunfire with security forces, injuring three police, after they stopped him at a checkpost. He then died in the grenade blast.

"Two people arrested at the scene are being interrogated by a joint investigation team," said Saud Aziz, the police chief of Rawalpindi, a city adjoining Islamabad, where the airport is located.

"One of them says that he was just a driver and was hired from Golra More (an Islamabad suburb) to go to the airport," he said.

Investigators were trying to match the bomber's face with police records and had fingerprinted him, he said. The bearded bomber's corpse, with the legs mangled by the blast, was shown to journalists after the attack.

Officials hoped the suspects could provide leads to the group behind the attack amid fears the militants were increasingly 'desperate' to send a message to military ruler Musharraf's government.

Pro-Taliban fighters in January vowed to avenge an airstrike on an alleged Al-Qaeda camp in the South Waziristan tribal region bordering Afghanistan, which broke a nearly two-year truce between the government and militants.

"Links are pointing there, but we are still investigating," interior minister Aftab Sherpao said when asked if investigations into the previous attacks had provided leads to militants in the tribal region.

Militants have opposed Musharraf since he ditched Pakistan's support for the Taliban regime after the September 11, 2001 attacks and launched a crackdown on extremism.

In 2003, he escaped two assassination attempts blamed on Al-Qaeda. Musharraf, who arrived back in Pakistan at an adjoining military airbase hours after the attack, returning from a trip to Iran and Turkey, condemned the 'terrorist' attack and praised the security forces for foiling it, state media said.

The incident was no longer being considered a suicide attack because "when we searched the body we did not find any explosive belt on him," Sherpao said.

Instead, the militant armed with pistols and grenades likely planned a 'hit and run attack' on crowds at the arrivals area, which failed when he panicked, said Brigadier Javed Cheema, head of the interior ministry's national crisis management cell.

"When police tried to check the car, he pulled a mask on his face and started firing. He ran towards the car park and threw a grenade which did not explode. Three bullets hit him in the chest and one grenade was found on his body," Cheema said.

Security at airports and other key sites was further beefed up after Tuesday's attack, which caused several flights to be delayed or diverted from Islamabad's busy terminal.

"This (attack) is a message to the government that they can strike at the most sensitive areas," a top intelligence official said on condition of anonymity.

Attacks have intensified in recent weeks, after a bomber blew himself up at the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad on January 26, killing a guard.

A suicide attack the next day in the northwestern city of Peshawar killed 14 people including six police.

Another bomber killed a policeman at a checkpost in the tribal town of Dera Ismail Khan on January 29. And a suicide car bomber killed two soldiers in the remote town of Tank on Saturday.