Pakistan’s PM-Designate Survives Assassination Bid.

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - Pakistan’s prime minister-designate Shaukat Aziz escaped unhurt in a suicide bomb attack Friday that killed at least six people, including his driver, witnesses and officials said.

Another 45 people were wounded, seven of them seriously, in the attack near Fatehjung, a rural constituency close to the town of Attock in the central province of Punjab, where Aziz was campaigning for a by-election.

The attack follows two assassination attempts on President Pervez Musharraf last December which were blamed on Pakistani militants linked to al Qaeda. It also came the day after Pakistan announced the arrest of a top al Qaeda suspect.

“These cowardly acts will not deter us from our fight against terror. Such dastardly acts are against the tenets and teachings of Islam,” Musharraf said in a statement issued to national news agency Associated Press of Pakistan following the attack on the man he wants as his next prime minister.

Musharraf has been saying this a lot lately. But the people who tried to kill him twice can—and do—pull countless quotes from the hadith (the record of the sayings of Mohammed) and sura (the chapters of the Koran) to justify their barbarous actions.