MULTAN (Agencies) Police arrested seven militants who were plotting to kill Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani and other top government officials, and the suspects claim they were getting orders from a militant in North Waziristan, police said. The conspiracy against Prime Minister Gilani was almost complete, district police chief Sayed Abid Qadri told reporters on Thursday. He said the militants were planning to attack Gilani when he travelled to his hometown of Multan, but gave no more details. The suspects were planning to use a car bomb for the attack, and that they had acquired large amounts of fertilizer to manufacture an improvised explosive device, since confiscated by police, police official Babar Bakhat Qureshi told CNN. A vehicle for the attack had not been acquired yet. The police confiscated one kilogram of gold and two and a half kilograms of silver, which the men were going to sell to fund the plot, the official said. Qureshi said the suspects have confessed that they were getting their orders and instructions from Qari Imran, a leader of a Taliban offshoot group from Miranshah in North Waziristan. Like other top officials, PM Gilani does not publicise his movements ahead of time and travels with extensive security. The men were also conspiring to kill Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, also a Multan native, and the Minister for Religious Affairs, who last year survived an assassination attempt in Islamabad, Qadri said. He said the suspects also had plans to attack a dam, a bridge and military installations. Qadri did not offer any evidence to back up his allegations. The report could not be verified by high security officials in Islamabad. Ministry of Interior officials also said they were not aware of such a plot. He said authorities learned about the plot during an initial interrogation of the seven militants, who were arrested late Wednesday after a shootout near a village in Ahmedpur East. The militants opened fire when police tried to pull their car over for a routine check, Qadri said. Nobody was wounded in the shooting, but two men managed to escape, he said. The men are members of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, a banned group linked to both the Taliban and al-Qaeda, Qadri said. The group has been blamed for attacking Shia worship places as well as assaults on security forces and other targets. Police said the attackers include Abdur Rahim alias Talha, a bomb-making expert who was working as a Taliban leader in Multan. Police also said the arrested militants were involved in a suicide attack that targeted the offices of the countrys main spy agency last year. In the attack in Multan on December 8 2009, two suicide attackers fired on soldiers while driving a pick-up truck packed with explosives past security checkpoints in an attempt to approach the local office of the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) agency, officials said. When challenged, the attackers detonated their car bomb prematurely, killing five civilians, two soldiers and themselves and blowing a massive crater in the road.