Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf narrowly escaped Thursday when a blast hit a bridge in Islamabad after his convoy had barely crossed it, police said.

 

 The blast at Faizabad bridge occurred early Thursday when Musharraf was en-route to his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad from the Armed Forces Institute of Cardiology (AFIC) in Rawalpindi, Dawn online reported. 

 

 Almost four to six kg of explosive material was planted in a pipeline near a footpath and the blast was so powerful that it caused a foot-deep hole in the ground.

 

 Police said that the blast targetted the former president. Musharraf has safely reached his farmhouse in Chak Shahzad where the Pakistan government has enhanced security. The former military dictator was admitted to the AFIC in early January due to a severe cardiac condition.

 

 Musharraf was again moved to the intensive care unit of the AIFC Saturday after his condition deteriorated on receiving the news of his mother, who is suffering from respiratory complications.

 

 The former army strongman was indicted Monday for high treason to which he pleaded not guilty. He has been charged with high treason for suspending the constitution when he declared an emergency in 2007. He took over in a bloodless coup when he dismissed the government of then prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999.

 

 Musharraf, who resigned in 2008 as president and went into exile, returned to Pakistan last March last year to run in the parliamentary elections. However, a court disqualified him from competing in the general elections in May.