Pakistan bids Bhutto goodbye
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Pakistan’s assassinated former premier Benazir Bhutto was laid to rest in her family’s ancestral grave Friday to scenes of searing emotion from hundreds of thousands of mourners.
State television said Bhutto was buried at the mauseoleum after a mullah led the massive crowd in funeral prayers.
A huge roar greeted her coffin, wrapped in the black, green and red flag of her Pakistan People’s Party, as it was borne towards the Bhutto mauseoleum in a white vehicle.
It took more than two hours to crawl the five kilometres from her family home in Naudero to the private mauseoleum in Ghari Khuda Baksh, deep in rural southern Pakistan.
Many mourners wailed and beat their chests in an outpouring of grief as the casket passed the vast crowds hanging out of every building and packing every street corner.
As authorities struggled to keep a lid on the seething anger that erupted into violence across the country, the government for the first time pointed a finger at Al-Qaeda for her slaying.
The extent of the violence has paralysed the nuclear-armed Muslim nation, triggering alarm around the world and throwing scheduled January 8 elections into disarray.
Interior ministry spokesman Brigadier Javed Cheema said Bhutto had been on an Al-Qaeda hit-list and it was likely the Islamic extremist network played a role in yesterday’s suicide attack that killed her and around 20 others.
"Benazir has been on the hit-list of Al-Qaeda," he told AFP. "Now there is every possibility that Al-Qaeda is behind this tragic attack to undermine the security of Pakistan."
Officials ordered paramilitary forces in Karachi, a Bhutto stronghold, to shoot rioters on sight and sent troops into several other cities in the south.
At least 19 people have been killed in violence since Bhutto’s death, and there have been angry demonstrations in several cities, with mobs ransacking offices and torching buildings and vehicles.
In Rawalpindi, the scene of her killing, police fired tear gas, and a crowd of some 1,500 stormed the office of a pro-government party in Peshawar.
The two-time former premier was buried next to her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, also a prime minister and who was executed by the military in 1979 after being ousted from power.
Bhutto’s husband and three children accompanied the coffin as it arrived by helicopter in nearby Naudero ahead of the ceremony.
Bhutto, 54, was leaving a rally where she had been campaigning for the vote when a suicide bomber shot her in the neck before blowing himself up.
US President George W. Bush described the killing as a "cowardly act" and telephoned Musharraf - a crucial ally in the US-led "war on terror" against Islamic extremism - to urge Pakistan to stay on the path of democracy.
Stunned world leaders appealed for calm and warned that extremists must not be allowed to destabilise the vote.
However, those elections now appear increasingly in doubt, with Pakistan’s other major opposition figure, Nawaz Sharif, pulling his party out and senior government officials considering whether to announce a delay.
"For now, the elections stand as they were announced. We’ll take the next step after consulting political parties," interim prime minister Mohammedmian Soomro said.
Sharif warned that going ahead with the polls would "destroy the country," and re-iterated his demand that Musharraf step down.
"This is the number-one demand of the nation today," he told reporters.
"They are not going to be credible," he said of the vote. "We believe that Musharraf has no intention of holding free and fair elections and yesterday was proof of that."
World stock markets slipped amid concerns over global stability, and crude oil futures climbed back towards the 100 dollars-per-barrel mark.
Bhutto was an outspoken critic of Al-Qaeda-linked Islamic extremists blamed for scores of bombings in Pakistan and had received death threats.
She had also accused elements from the intelligence services of involvement in a suicide attack at an October 18 rally welcoming her home from exile. She narrowly escaped, but the attack killed 139 people.
Bhutto became the first elected female leader of a Muslim country in 1988. She was deposed in 1990 amid corruption allegations, but was premier a second time from 1993 to 1996.
Educated at Oxford and Harvard, her return here in October brought hopes of power-sharing with Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999.
The hopes were quickly shattered however, first by the Karachi bombing and then when Musharraf imposed emergency rule on November 3, lifting it only six weeks later.
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