Pakistan in turmoil as Benazir is assassinated

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan was plunged into turmoil and uncertainty on Thursday after charismatic former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a meticulously planned strike, just two months after she ended eight years of exile to return to her country to fight elections.

Bhutto, 54, died a horrific death minutes after addressing a crowded election meeting at Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi near here in circumstances that remained a mystery, with conflicting versions given of her last moments. Interestingly, it was the same venue where Pakistan's first prime minister, Liaqat Ali Khan, was shot dead in 1951.

Makhdoom Amin Fahim, a leader of her Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) who was with Bhutto in the car, said there was a loud blast in which many of her supporters were killed followed by gunfire. Bhutto then got off the vehicle to see what happened - and immediately came under gunfire.

"I told her not to step out but she did not listen to me," Fahim said in Rawalpindi, the garrison town that houses the headquarters of the Pakistan Army. But even Fahim could not explain who fired - and from which direction.

Other PPP officials had a different version. Most of them said that one or two gunmen opened fire from close range from AK-47 assault rifles, fatally injuring Bhutto in the neck and head. Moments later, the assassins set off explosives strapped on their bodies, killing some 30 people and sparking mayhem and panic.

In the process, Bhutto - a two time former prime minister - lay gravely wounded and bleeding without any medical attention reaching her for good 10 minutes. It was another 40 minutes by the time she was rushed to the Rawalpindi General Hospital where doctors declared her dead, plunging Pakistan and a world that was expecting her to become the prime minister once again into shock and sorrow.

"It is the gloomiest day in the history of Pakistan," a weeping Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister and one time political rival, told reporters at the Rawalpindi hospital, recalling the conversation he had with her a few days ago when they discussed a joint strategy to fight the Jan 8 elections.

And as Bhutto's distraught husband Asif Ali Zardari made his way to Pakistan with his three inconsolable children, Sharif announced he would boycott the elections if it were held.

"(President) Pervez Musharraf is responsible and accountable for what happened today," Sharif told a private news channel.

The scene at the election rally presented a gory site, with dismembered bodies strewn in an open ground. Ambulances with screaming sirens rushed the badly wounded and the dying to hospitals. Reporters said they saw a mutilated head. A pistol lay at the blood-splashed spot where Bhutto was shot.
 
The assassination drew widespread condemnation from the US to Russia, from China to Britain. In India, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said he was "deeply shocked and horrified" over the assassination and that the killing "is a reminder of the common dangers our region faces from cowardly acts of terrorism".

Millions across Pakistan wailed, cried and howled as they learnt about the killing of Bhutto, an iconic figure whose family has been compared with that of the Kennedys for the tragedies the two have suffered at assassins' hands.

In no time, mobs took over the streets in several places including Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore, attacking and burning government vehicles and gas stations and blockading busy roads with burning tyres.

In Sind, the Bhutto family's home province, the house of an anti-PPP political leader, Liaqat Jadoi, was set on fire. In Rawalpindi, three election officials of Sheikh Rashid, a strong supporter of Musharraf, were torched.

Under widespread criticism for failing to protect Pakistan's two best-known politicians, Bhutto and Sharif, whose motorcade was also attacked on Thursday in Rawalpindi earlier in the day killing four people, Musharraf called for peace and declared that terrorists were the biggest enemies of Pakistan.

Bhutto survived a similar suicide attack hours after she returned to Pakistan Oct 18 but some 150 supporters of her party were killed.