A suicide bomber today killed himself and at least six people in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi, in what was thought to be an assassination attempt against President Pervez Musharraf.
The blast occurred at a police checkpoint about 1.5 miles from the headquarters of the Pakistan army and the office of General Musharraf.
His spokesman, Rashid Qureshi, said the president was safe inside Army House at the time.
Mohammed Saeed, a city police official, said a lone suicide bomber approached the checkpoint on foot on a main road in the city and blew himself up.
Seven people were killed, according to the Reuters news agency, including the bomber and three police officers.
Women and children were among 11 people injured while passing by in a small bus.
"Our policeman challenged the attacker who exploded himself near their picket," the city police chief, Saud Aziz, told Reuters.
As yet there has been no claim of responsibility.
Pakistan has recently been hit by a string of suicide attacks, mostly blamed on Islamic militants battling security forces near the Afghan border.
A suicide attack on the homecoming parade of the former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Karachi 12 days ago killed more than 140 people.
In Rawalpindi, a garrison city just south of the capital, Islamabad, two blasts last month killed 25 people and wounded more than 60, many of them on a defence ministry bus.
Last week, Pakistan deployed paramilitary forces to tackle militant supporters of a pro-Taliban cleric in the north-western district of Swat.
Officials say four days of violence in the once-peaceful mountain region have left around 100 people dead, most of them militants.
Gen Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts, including two in December 2003, and one last July.