Benazir Bhutto, the Pakistani opposition leader and former Prime Minister, has been killed in a suicide bombing on her political rally today. | Murder most foul... |
Rehman Malik, a security adviser for her Pakistan People's Party, suggested that the killer opened fire as she left the rally, hitting her in the neck and chest, before blowing himself up. He blamed the government for failing to protect Ms Bhutto. "We repeatedly informed the government to provide her proper security and appropriate equipment including jammers, but they paid no heed to our requests," said Mr Malik.
The exact nature of the attack remained unclear, however. "It may have been pellets packed into the suicide bomberÂ’s vest that hit her," Javed Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman said.
Russia and the United States both swiftly issued condemnations of the atrocity, which was being blamed on Islamic militants. A Russian foreign ministry spokesman predicted that it would bring fresh instability to the region, and trigger a fresh round of terrorist attacks. "The attack shows that there are still those in Pakistan trying to undermine reconciliation and democratic development in Pakistan," said an official from the US State Department.
| Wow. No kidding? Perhaps if a considerable part of "Pakistain" wasn't under the control of al-Qaeda or Taliban warlords the country might have some remote chance of missing failure, if only by a hair. But probably not, since the remainder of the country spends its time bumping each other off over matters religious and ethnic almost as much as do the primitives of NWFP and FATA. |
| Breaking things is almost as characteristic of Pak political discourse as killing people. |
| Only took one to succeed, didn't it? |
The latest bombing was the second outbreak of political violence in Pakistan today.
| Earlier, gunmen inside the offices of a political party that supports Mr Musharraf opened fire on supporters of another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, killing four. |
Ms Bhutto, 54, served twice as PakistanÂ’s prime minister between 1988 and 1996. She was born on June 21, 1953, into a wealthy landowning family. Her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, founded the Pakistan PeopleÂ’s Party (PPP) and was president and later prime minister of Pakistan from 1971-77. After gaining degrees in politics at Harvard and Oxford universities, she returned to Pakistan in 1977, just before the military seized power from her father. She inherited the leadership of the PPP after her fatherÂ’s execution in 1979 under military ruler General Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.
First voted in as prime minister in 1988 - the first woman ever to serve as prime minister of a Muslim country - Ms Bhutto was sacked by the then-president on corruption charges in 1990. She took power again in 1993 after her successor, Mr Sharif, was forced to resign after a row with the president.
But Ms Bhutto was no more successful in her second spell as prime minister, and Mr Sharif was back in power by 1996. In 1999, both she and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, were sentenced to five years in jail and fined $8.6 million on charges of taking bribes from a Swiss company hired to fight customs fraud. A higher court later overturned the conviction as biased. Ms Bhutto, who had made her husband investment minister during her period in office from 1993 to 1996, was abroad at the time of her conviction and chose not to return to Pakistan.
Mr Sharif meanwhile was deposed by General Pervez Musharraf in a military coup, and went into exile from which he too only returned in the last few weeks.
In 2006 Ms Bhutto joined an Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy with her arch-rival Mr Sharif, but the two disagreed over strategy for dealing with President Musharraf. Ms Bhutto decided it was better to negotiate with him, while Mr Sharif refused to have any dealings with the general. Both had recently thrown themselves into campaigning for the multi-party parliamentary elections due to be held in Pakistan on January 8. Global stock markets fell on news of the killing, and the price of gold and government bonds rose.