BREAKING NEWS: Thousands weep as Bhutto buried

28 December 2007
Report: Reuters

NAUDERO, Pakistan (Reuters) - Benazir Bhutto was buried on Friday in her family mausoleum after the opposition leader's assassination plunged Pakistan into crisis and triggered violent protests across her native Sindh province.

Tens of thousands of mourners wept and beat their heads as Bhutto, killed by a suicide attacker at an election rally on Thursday, was carried from her ancestral home in Sindh, in the south of the country, to the domed mausoleum.

The death of the 54-year-old Bhutto stoked fears that a January 8 election meant to return Pakistan to civilian rule could be put off, although caretaker Prime Minister Mohammadmian Soomro said there was no change in timing for now.

Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, wept as he accompanied the closed coffin, draped with the green, red and black tricolor of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, on the 7-km journey to the tomb in the village of Garhi Khuda Bakhsh.

He then prayed at the tomb with the couple's three children, son Bilawal, 19, and daughters Bakhtawar, 17 and Aseefa, 14.

Many mourners chanted slogans against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf and the United States, which has long backed the former army general in the hope he can maintain stability in the nuclear-armed country racked by Islamist violent.

"Shame on the killer Musharraf, shame on the killer U.S.," mourners cried.

Others wept in despair. "Bhutto was my sister and Bhutto was like my mother," cried farmer Imam Baksh. "With her death, the world has ended for us."

Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999 but left the army last month to become a civilian president, has appealed for calm and blamed Islamist militants for the killing.

But many accused him of failing to protect Bhutto, who died in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, home of the Pakistani army.

In Sindh, where Bhutto had huge popular support,

particularly among the rural poor, at least 16 people, including three policemen, were killed in protests.

"We're anticipating the situation might get worse after the funeral," Sindh Interior Minister Akhtar Zaman told Reuters.

SMOULDERING VEHICLES

World leaders urged Pakistan to stay the course towards democracy, as Bhutto's death rattled markets and triggered a flight to less risky assets such as bonds and gold.

"Unrest in Pakistan is eroding the market sentiment dramatically as Pakistan, unlike North Korea or Iran, is known to really have nuclear weapons," said Koichi Ogawa, chief portfolio manager at Daiwa SB Investments.

In Sindh, authorities issued an order to shoot violent protesters on sight. Hundreds of cars, trucks and buses smoldered in the interior of the province and crowds of men set up road blocks and chanted slogans against Musharraf.

Meanwhile, a blast at an election meeting in Pakistan's troubled northwest killed six people including a candidate for the party that supports Musharraf, police said.

There were also sporadic protests elsewhere in the country and one person was killed in the eastern city of Lahore.

Bhutto returned home from self-imposed exile in October, hoping to become prime minister for a third time.

But as she left the election rally she stood to wave to supporters from the sun-roof of her bullet-proof car. An attacker shot at her before blowing himself up, police and witnesses said.

She was killed by bullets to the head and neck. "The shooter was either very well trained or he was very close so he could hit her in the temple and neck," a security official said.

She was buried alongside her father, former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged in 1979 after being deposed by a military coup.

Her two brothers, Murtaza and Shahnawaz, who both died in unexplained circumstances, are also buried in the mausoleum she herself had ordered to be built.

"ELECTIONS STAND"

The United States, which relies on Pakistan as an ally against al Qaeda and the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan, had championed the Harvard- and Oxford-educated Bhutto, seeing in her the best hope of a return to democracy.

"The United States strongly condemns this cowardly act by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan's democracy," President George W. Bush said.

He phoned Musharraf and urged Pakistanis to honor Bhutto's memory by going ahead with the election.

"Elections stand as they were announced," Prime Minister Soomro told reporters. But analysts said the assassination, which followed a wave of suicide attacks and the worsening of an Islamist insurgency, could make this impossible.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Bhutto's old political rival, said his party would boycott the January election.

He blamed Musharraf for the instability.

Musharraf imposed a state of emergency in November in what was seen as an attempt to stop the judiciary from vetoing his re-election as president. He lifted emergency rule this month.

In 1988, aged just 35, Bhutto became the Muslim world's first democratically elected woman prime minister. Deposed in 1990, she was re-elected in 1993, and ousted again in 1996 amid charges of corruption she said were politically motivated.

Bhutto escaped unhurt from a suicide attack in October that killed at least 139 people.

She had spoken of al Qaeda plots to kill her. But she also had enemies in other quarters including among the powerful intelligence services and some allies of Musharraf.

Police said on Friday that they had reconstructed a mangled human head hoping to identify the man who killed her.