LAHORE, Dec 20: Police on Monday claimed arresting four suspected Al Qaeda operatives, including a close associate of top terrorist Abu Fraj, allegedly involved in two attempts on the life of President Pervez Musharraf.

The arrested men belonged to banned organizations Lashkar-i-Jhangvi and Harkat Al Jihad Islami and had been working for the Al Qaeda network for some years, Lahore police chief (investigation) Chaudhry Shafqaat Ahmad said at a press conference.

One of the accused, Malik Tehsin alias Abdul Jabbar of Rawalpindi, had been a close aide to Abu Fraj, the mastermind of the two assassination attempts with a Rs250 million bounty on his head.

Chaudhry Ahmad alleged that Tehsin had been providing facilities like arranging accommodation and transportation and providing other logistic support to the terrorist.

They had met in a training camp in Afghanistan, he added. He identified the other three accused as Amir Maqsood alias Abu Haroon, Mahmood Ahmad and Sajjad Haider of Shahdara Town, Lahore.

The police chief also alleged that the four men had been working to reorganize the terror network in Lahore, and they had been on a looting spree to raise funds for their operations. Acting on a tip, police set up a picket near the Minar-i-Pakistan and the accused were held after a chase.

The police chief alleged that the accused had killed a Shia leader, Hafeez Shah, and his daughter, Faryal Hafeez, in Rawalpindi in 1998 and had hurled a hand grenade on a UN vehicle in Lahore last year.

He also accused them of planning another terror strike in Lahore and storing missiles in a house near the Lahore airport. "One of the missiles misfired and hit a (nearby) residential colony. It caused no loss (of life), but had forced them to abandon their plan."

The police chief said that two more alleged terrorists had been rounded up on information gained from the four. However, he declined to give any further information. Two hand-grenades, four pistols and 120 bullets are said to have been recovered from the arrested men's possession.