JUST AND UP DATE

Bhutto safe after Pakistan blasts

Two bombs exploded near a convoy carrying former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto through Karachi on Friday during her return from eight years in exile. At least 50 people were killed, scores more injured.

The blasts transformed a carnival atmosphere into the horror of a country riven by division and extremism.

Ms Bhutto and senior leaders of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) narrowly escaped death, protected by her heavily armoured vehicle, but over a hundred supporters were taken to hospital, home ministry officials said.

The attack is likely to change the nature of Pakistani politics over the next few months, potentially forcing the PPP to rethink its plans to make Ms Bhutto hit the election campaign trail with a series of large rallies across the country.

The 54-year-old former prime minister was immediately taken to her fortified residence in Karachi, Bilawal House, forcing her to abandon a plan to address her first rally on Pakistani soil this century on her eventual arrival in the city centre.

Body parts were strewn across the road leading to the tomb of Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, the downtown destination of Ms Bhutto’s agonisingly slow-moving procession from the international airport.

President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Miinister Shaukat Aziz condemned the blast. A Karachi police official told the FT that the explosions had been caused the ”the most powerful bombs I have seen in a very long time.”

Police were by 2am local time yet to determine whether the blasts were a suicide attack or caused by bombs planted along the procession route. Home Minister Aftab Sherpao told Dawn News that the apparent absence of a crater suggested a suicide attack.

Farhatullah Babar, the PPP’s spokesperson, told the same television station that Ms Bhutto had called for Pakistan’s intelligence bureau chief to be sacked and had reproached the government for failing to provide her with adequate security.

The former prime minister was inside her armoured vehicle at the time of the explosions, rather than in the glass canopy from which she had been waving to the hundreds of thousands of supporters accompanying her into the city. .

Baitullah Mehsud, a militant Islamist leader from Pakistan’s tribal belt along the Afghan border, had vowed to welcome her with suicide attacks, a threat she had dismissed earlier on Friday, saying she feared ”noone but Allah”.

The explosions came about twelve hours after Ms Bhutto returned to Pakistan on an Emirates flight from Dubai, ending eight years of self-imposed exile and marking the start of the PPP’s campaign for next year’s general election.

”I’ve dreamt of this moment for a very longtime,” she said on her arrival at the airport, where with tears in her eyes she promised to ”take Pakistan away from military dictatorship towards democracy”.

Like a film studio nervous about the box-office appeal of a forthcoming big-budget picture, the PPP had decked the streets of Karachi with posters of its star, leaving scarcely a lamppost or billboard free of her image.

The party, founded by her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – who was executed by the regime of General Zia ul-Haq, an earlier US-backed military dictator – had bused supporters in from all four provinces, providing each vehicle with a barrel of biryani.

Sajjad Hussain, the driver of one bus-load of supporters from the district of Layyah in southern Punjab, said a local doctor, a PPP parliamentary candidate, had paid 75,000 rupees ($1,240, €868, £606) to hire the vehicle for Ms Bhutto’s homecoming.

Her supporters denied being paid to attend the rally, a common practice in south Asia. Khurshid Hasan, 27, a primary school teacher, said he had paid Rs600 out of his monthly salary of Rs4,000 for a seat on one of the PPP’s buses.