Former premier Benazir Bhutto assassinated in Pakistan

Benazir Bhutto
©AFP - Aamir Qureshi

RAWALPINDI, Pakistan - Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide attack on Thursday, just two months after the former premier returned from exile for a political comeback.

Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister, had just addressed a campaign rally for next month's parliamentary elections when a suicide bomber blew himself up outside the venue, killing her and at least 10 other people.

There were unconfirmed reports that the attacker had also opened fire on her with a weapon before the explosion.

"It may have been pellets packed into the suicide bomber's vest that hit her," interior ministry spokesman Javed Cheema told AFP.

It was the second suicide attack at a Bhutto event since she had returned from exile in October, aiming to contest the elections, and comes amid an unprecedented wave of violence in the country.

The deadliest terror attack in Pakistan's history targetted her homecoming rally just hours after her return, leaving 139 people dead.

After that attack, authorities repeatedly warned her they had information that Islamic militants were trying to kill her.

Government officials said President Pervez Musharraf had been privately told of her death.

The killing will deepen the political crisis in Pakistan, where Islamic militants have vowed to disrupt the vote and Musharraf's opponents -- including Bhutto -- accused him of planning to rig the result.

Benazir Bhutto arrives for a campaign rally in Rawalpindi
©AFP - Aamir Qureshi

There have been more than 40 suicide attacks in Pakistan this year that have left at least 770 people dead.

Bhutto, educated at Oxford and Harvard, became the first female prime minister of a Muslim country when she took the helm in Pakistan in 1988. Her father, also a Pakistani prime minister, was hanged by the military in 1979 after being ousted from power.

Recalling how she stood at his grave, Bhutto once wrote: "At that moment I pledged to myself that I would not rest until democracy had returned to Pakistan."

She had repeatedly accused President Musharraf of being dictator and had been campaigning with fierce criticisms of what she said was his autocratic rule, vowing her Pakistan People's Party would deliver democracy.

Her killing was immediately condemned by the United States, which counts Pakistan as a pivotal ally in the US-led "war on terror".

Deputy State Department spokesman Tom Casey could not confirm that Bhutto had been killed in the bombing.

But he 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."

A shaken Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto's main rival in the January 8 election, said he shared the grief of the entire nation and promised to take up her fight.

"I assure you that I will fight your war from now on," he told Bhutto's supporters, who were crying and wailing outside the hospital in the city of Rawalpindi.