Pakistan opposition leader Bhutto assassinated (2nd Roundup)

Dec 28, 2007, 2:23 GMT

Pakistan Peoples Party opposition leader Benazir Bhutto enters a hotel on 27 December 2007 hours before she was assassinated as she left in her vehicle at a election rally in the city of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Pakistan President Musharraf declared 3 days of national mourning. EPA/OLIVIER MATTHYS

Islamabad - Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated Thursday as she left an election campaign rally in the city of Rawalpindi, triggering nationwide riots and throwing crucial upcoming parliamentary elections into doubt.

The former two-time prime minister and political icon, 54, who had survived a suicide attack two months ago after home returning from exile, was shot dead by a gunman who then detonated a bomb, killing himself and at least 19 people and wounding more than 40, government and hospital officials said.

The assassination sparked anti-government rioting in several cities across Pakistan and prompted the country's other main opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, to declare that his party would boycott the January 8 polls.

Bhutto was pronounced dead after being rushed to a local hospital in Rawalpindi, a garrison city near Islamabad, where she had addressed a crowd of several thousand cheering supporters.

A hospital source in Rawalpindi told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa that Bhutto died from 'a bullet wound to the neck,' though local media reports said Bhutto was also shot in the head.

Makhdum Amin Fahim, vice president of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) told a press conference Thursday night that the bomber had first fired several bullets at Bhutto as she waved to supporters from the sunroof of her white Range Rover before blowing himself up as her convoy fled the scene.

Farhadullah Babar, a PPP spokesman, said she was already dead when her convoy arrived at the Rawalpindi General Hospital around 5:30 pm.

'She is no longer among us,' he told dpa by telephone. 'She has given her life for the people of Pakistan exactly in the same manner as her father.'

Family scion Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a former prime minister, was ousted by the Pakistani military in 1977 and hanged two years later, and two of her brothers also died under mysterious circumstances.

In the days leading up to her assassination, Bhutto claimed that elements within President Pervez Musharraf's government and Pakistan's security services who had sympathies with Islamic extremists were plotting to kill her.

Just hours before Bhutto's murder, pro-government supporters fired into a crowd of people gathering in Rawalpindi for a campaign rally for Sharif, killing four people and wounding 16, a Sharif spokesman said and local reports said.

'The attacks on the rallies of two major opposition leaders in the same day shows Musharraf's real intentions,' Sharif told a press conference. 'I demand that Musharraf resign without delay. Musharraf and Pakistan cannot co-exist.'

In a live address to the nation Thursday night, however, Musharraf blamed Bhutto's death on pro-Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists who have carried out more than 50 suicide attacks this year, and appealed for calm.

'This was the action of the same terrorists against whom we are fighting,' he said, declaring a three-day national mourning period. 'Today, on this sorrowful occasion, I express the determination that we will not rest until we have eliminated and uprooted these terrorists.'

Distraught Bhutto supporters rioted in major cities and towns across Pakistan into Thursday night, clashing with police and setting fire to dozens of vehicles, banks and even the offices and residences of members of a pro-government political party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid, which is also contesting the elections.

Musharraf had needed the elections go smoothly to end a nearly year-long political crisis that saw him declare a state of emergency and suspend the constitution on November 3 to prevent the Supreme Court from nullifying his controversial October re-election.

US President George W Bush sees Musharraf as a critical ally in the global war on terror, and his administration had pushed him to return to democracy to avert a prolonged crisis that could affect military operations against al-Qaeda and Taliban militants along Pakistan's western border with Afghanistan.

It was the Bush administration which had helped brokered Bhutto's return from exile to help ease the crisis and provide Musharraf with more political support, but now all bets are off.

'What will happen is (the opposition) will withdraw and they will all join a (anti-Musharraf) movement,' said Talat Masood, a retired army general and political analyst. 'And it will put a lot of political pressure on Musharraf and no one knows what will unfold.'