A senior Pakistani politician and former aide to ex-military ruler Pervez Musharraf escaped a gun attack yesterday that killed two of his bodyguards, police said.

Earlier police said they had foiled a plot to attack a five-star hotel and kill Americans in Pakistan.

"Sheikh Rashid is safe in the attack which took place at his election office," in the city of Rawalpindi, his spokesman Javed Qureshi said.

He received injuries to his leg, but not from bullets, he said.

"Two people died when unknown people fired bullets on Sheikh Rashid when he was heading towards his car," Rawalpindi police chief Aslam Tarin said.

Rashid, 59, who served as information minister in Musharraf's cabinet was considered close to the former dictator who stepped down in 2007.

He is a candidate in a hotly contested by-election scheduled to take place next month in Rawalpindi, just outside the Pakistani capital Islamabad.

A vocal politician, Rashid lost his seat in the national assembly representing Rawalpindi at elections in 2008 and is challenging a candidate from former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).

Pakistan had postponed the by-election last year for security reasons.

A PML-N spokesman strongly condemned the attack, calling for politics of the ballot not politics of bullets.

Officials said the government in Punjab province ordered an investigation into Monday's attack.

In Lahore, Pakistan police claimed Monday to have arrested six suspects, including a would-be suicide bomber, who were plotting to attack a five-star hotel and kill Americans.

Police recovered an explosive-laden suicide vest fitted with 26 hand grenades during the operation in Lahore, the country's second-biggest city, senior police superintendent Zulfikar Hameed told a news conference.

Police in Pakistan, which is under huge US pressure to do more to root out Islamist militants, routinely claim to foil high-profile attacks, most often in Karachi, but rarely release any details of the alleged plots.

It is not possible to confirm the alleged plots independently.

The six suspects were paraded at the news conference wearing black masks to hide their identity.

"Their target was Lahore's Pearl Continental Hotel where some Americans were staying," Hameed said. "They wanted large-scale death and devastation."

"Five terrorists were assigned to explode hand grenades and amid expected panic in the hotel, the suicide bomber was to blow himself up," he said.