ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Police arrested 10 people suspected of links to the Taliban and al-Qaida in two nighttime raids near the capital, officials said Tuesday.
The detainees, some of them Afghans, were arrested late Monday in Rawalpindi, where assassins tried to kill Pakistan's military leader Sunday with a bomb. But a government statement said the arrests were unrelated to that attack.
The 10 were "involved in unlawful activities" and some weapons were seized, the statement said.
An Interior Ministry official, who did not want to be identified, said the raids were part of a campaign against the Taliban and al-Qaida and followed an intelligence tip-off. Pakistani intelligence agents were interrogating the detainees, he said.
On Sunday, a bomb planted under a concrete bridge exploded moments after President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's limousine passed over it. No one was hurt.
Rawalpindi, where Musharraf's residence and army headquarters are located, is 10 miles from the capital, Islamabad.
Also Tuesday, police arrested a man who was found to be carrying explosives as he boarded a train at the Jehangira station, about 60 miles northwest of Islamabad.
Police were conducting a routine search when they found two sticks of dynamite, two detonators and two fuses in the luggage of Ulfat Khan, 35, according to a railway police official.
The train was bound for the southern city of Karachi, which is Pakistan's commercial center and main port on the Arabian Sea.