Benazir Bhutto assassinated - Pakistan in crisis
December 28, 2007
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Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto has been killed in a suicide bombing at an election rally she had just addressed in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.
Ms Bhutto, 54, who was rushed to hospital after the attack, died on the operating table.
“At 6.16pm, she expired,” said Wasif Ali Khan, a member of Ms Bhutto’s party, at Rawalpindi General Hospital.
A senior official of Pakistan’s Interior Ministry confirmed that Ms Bhutto had died but there were conflicting accounts of how she was killed.
A party security adviser said Ms Bhutto was shot in the neck and chest as she got into her vehicle, before the gunman blew himself up.
“The man first fired at Bhutto’s vehicle. She ducked and then he blew himself up,” police officer Mohammad Shahid said last night.
There were also reports Ms Bhutto had been hit by ball bearings and pellets in the bomb hidden in the jacket worn by the suicide bomber.
Sources close to her family said the former Pakistani prime minister never regained consciousness after taking the full impact of the blast.
Ms Bhutto’s death plunges Pakistan into what many will regard as the gravest crisis in its 60 years of independence, and there were immediate suggestions last night that the national elections due on January 8 will now have to be cancelled.
Up to 20 people were also killed in the attack, which took place just after Ms Bhutto addressed the crowd of supporters.
The suicide bombing came only hours after pro-government party supporters clashed with backers of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif near the Pakistani capital, killing four people and wounding three.
The two attacks marked the worst day of violence so far in the campaign for the elections after eight years of military rule under recently retired army chief, President Pervez Musharraf.
The United States condemned the attack. Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey said: “We obviously condemn the attack that shows that there are people out there who are trying to disrupt the building of democracy in Pakistan.”
Ms Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan from exile two months ago, had planned an earlier rally in the city, but Mr Musharraf forced her to cancel it, citing security fears.
In October, suicide bombers struck a parade celebrating Ms Bhutto’s return from exile, killing more than 140 people in the southern city of Karachi.
Reporters at the scene said body parts and flesh were scattered at the back gate of the Liaqat Bagh park where Ms Bhutto had spoken.
In recent weeks, suicide bombers have repeatedly targeted security forces in Rawalpindi, a city near the capital where Mr Musharraf stays and where the Pakistan army has its headquarters.
Ms Bhutto, born on June 21, 1953, in Karachi was the first woman elected to lead a post-colonial Muslim state.
She was twice elected Prime Minister of Pakistan being sworn in for the first time in 1988 but removed from office 20 months later under orders of then president Ghulam Ishaq Khan on grounds of alleged corruption.
In 1993 Ms Bhutto was re-elected but was again removed in 1996 on similar charges.
Ms Bhutto went into self-imposed exile in Dubai in 1998, where she remained until she returned to Pakistan on October 18, after reaching an understanding with Mr Musharraf under which she was granted amnesty and all corruption charges were withdrawn.
Bhutto’s father, also a Pakistani prime minister, was assassinated in 1979.
Ms Bhutto is survived by her husband, Asif Zardari, and three children, as well as her elderly mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto.
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