 Benazir Bhutto |
A gunman shot and killed Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto then blew himself up in an attack at a campaign rally that killed at least 20 others.
“She has been martyred,” said an official with Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, Rehman Malik.
Bhutto was taken to Rawalpindi General Hospital after the attack and pronounced dead at 6:16 p.m local time.
Tearful supporters at the hospital smashed the glass door at the entrance to the emergency unit and chanted “Dog, Musharraf, dog,” in reference to Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf.
U.S. officials are looking into a report that al-Qaida’s main spokesman has claimed responsibility for Bhutto’s death.
“We terminated the most precious American asset which vowed to defeat (the) mujahadeen,” Mustafa Abu Al-Yazid told Adnkronos International in a phone call from an unknown location.
Al-Yazid is the main al-Qaida commander in Afghanistan. The decision to assassinate Bhutto is believed to have been made by al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, according to the news agency.
The death of the 54-year-old two-time prime minister in the run-up to the Jan. 8 election prompted fears of mass protests and violence across the nuclear-armed country.
Musharraf put Pakistani troops on “red alert” nationwide and blamed terrorists for Bhutto’s death.
“I want to express my resolve and seek the cooperation from the entire nation, and we will not rest until we eliminate these terrorists and root them out,” he said in a speech broadcast nationwide.
Musharraf announced three days of mourning for Bhutto.
In brief remarks, President Bush condemned “murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.”
In October, suicide bombers struck a parade in Karachi celebrating Bhutto’s return to Pakistan, killing more than 140 people. Rawalpindi, the headquarters of the Pakistan army, has been a frequent target of suicide bombers in recent weeks.
Today, at the first campaign rally since her return from exile, hundreds of riot police manned security checkpoints with metal detectors. Musharraf already had canceled an earlier rally in the city because of security concerns.
U.S. officials, watching with concern as Musharraf has become increasingly authoritarian, have invested their hopes in the ability of Bhutto’s party to contest a fair election.
Musharraf called on Pakistanis to remain calm so that the “nefarious designs of terrorists can be defeated.”
Political rival Nawaz Sharif, another former prime minister, told the BBC Bhutto’s death was a tragedy for “the entire nation.”
“I can’t tell you what the feelings of the people of Pakistan are today,” he said after returning from the hospital.
Aide Riaz Khan said Bhutto was “very brave, she said she would give her life for Pakistan.”
“A fish cannot live without water, and she was the leader of the poor people of Pakistan and never wanted to be apart from them,” Khan said. “She said: ‘These are my people and my children, I have to be with them.'”
The attack came minutes after Bhutto addressed supporters at the city’s Liaqat Bagh park, about eight miles south of Islamabad. Two gunshots were heard as her vehicle pulled into the main street, then a bomb exploded next to her car, according to party supporter Chaudry Mohammed Nazir.
Police confirmed she was shot in the neck and chest before a suicide bomber blew himself up.
Body parts and flesh were scattered at the back gate, according to an Associated Press reporter. Rescuers rushed to put victims in ambulances as peopled wailed nearby.
Pakistani and foreign Islamist militants who viewed Bhutto as a betrayer of Islam and a pawn of the U.S. repeatedly had threatened to kill her. But Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, which has had close ties to the Islamists since the 1970s, will also be a suspect in the assassination, the London Times reported.
Two warlords based in the country’s lawless northwestern areas near Afghanistan had threatened to kill Bhutto on her return, the paper noted.
One was Baitullah Mehsud, who has close ties to al-Qaida and the Afghan Taliban, and the other was Haji Omar, leader of the Pakistani Taliban, who fought against the Soviets in Afghanistan.
After the October assassination attempt, Bhutto publicized a letter signed by a purported friend of al-Qaida and Osama bin Laden threatening to slaughter her like a goat.
Bhutto accused Pakistani authorities of not providing her with sufficient security and hinted that they may have been complicit in the October attack.
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WND Staff