Police defused a roadside time-bomb just minutes before the opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif was due to pass the spot in Peshawar on Thursday, officials said. Former Prime Minister, Nawaz was travelling in a convoy to address a lawyers' convention and a political rally ahead of elections on February 18.
The discovery came exactly four weeks after his fellow opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a gun and suicide attack at an election meeting in the northern city of Rawalpindi.
"We recovered a 400 gram (0.8 pounds) bomb fitted with a timer beneath a main bridge near the high court on the route that Nawaz was to take. We have defused it," bomb disposal squad official, Hukam Khan told AFP. A senior police officer, Ijaz Khan, said the bomb was found wrapped in a plastic shopping bag.
"It was planted on the road that Nawaz Sharif was to pass. When policemen were searching the area, they found it and immediately called in bomb disposal staff who defused it," Khan said. A spokesman for Nawaz said their convoy had been halted about a kilometre (half a mile) before it reached the area.
"We are sitting in the car. Police have stopped our convoy. They have said there is a report of some explosives in the area where we were supposed to go," the spokesman told AFP over telephone. Pakistani officials have said that Sharif and other politicians are targets for terrorists trying to destabilise the nuclear-armed nation ahead of the elections.